I took a week off during the move and last week managed a weak 23 miles, but I did run my longest run since my marathon 5 months ago! If you've followed me you'll know how much I've been struggling to run. I ended up taking a 3 month break from running. I turned to cycling and really enjoyed it. I built myself up to my first century (100 miles) but as the weather started getting warmer, it was hard to get out for the time that I had been, so I started running again. It's been a struggle to find my groove again but I think it's finally happened. I've started running my long runs on the trails and completely loving it! I ran 15 miles yesterday in some brutal weather, but it made me feel so strong. 90 degress with 60% humidity is no joke! I drank almost 70oz of water, used 2 GU's, and ate 1 waffle bar. I felt really good despite the weather.
I have been really nervous about getting my mileage back up since taking a long break. I was really scared of injury and doing too much. It's taken me longer than I thought it would to rebuild, but I've been cautious. It feels SO good to be running something over the half marathon distance again!
I realized something this weekend to help me get out the door on my long runs. I've struggled with my longs runs because it's the weekend and I usually stay up rather late watching TV or a movie with my husband. Running my long runs on little sleep is hard! During the summer, I'm up at 4:00am to run and don't get to bed til after midnight. But as I was talking myself into getting up in a few hours for Sunday's run I had a thought, the night before a marathon how many hours of sleep do I get? On a good night, maybe 3 hours and on a not good night, maybe 30 minutes. So why am I stressing over getting enough sleep before a long run if I hardly sleep before a marathon? I told myself "it's good training" to not get 8 hours of sleep before a long run because I wouldn't do that before a race. I'm a type of person who uses "practice how you play" in my training, so running with little sleep is a perfect way to train!
Something else I'm realizing that maybe training for a marathon or really to train to qualify for Boston, just isn't exciting me anymore. As much as I really want to qualify, there's way more to it than training for months and months and then showing up on race day and executing your plan perfectly. I feel that in all honesty, the stars have to align and race day has to be perfect. Well, how often in training are runs perfect? For me it's a rare thing. I know a lot of my burn out this past 1.5 years has been from training incredibly hard but then showing up on race day ready to hit the qualifying time but things end up differently. Like starting my period around mile 20 in a marathon that I was right on pace until noticing I had started. Or when the weather is 30 degrees warmer than the usual temperature on race day. There are things that happen that you can't train for. And that gets discouraging. Very discouraging. 5 of my 7 marathons have been huge letdowns and not because of me showing up unprepared but because of other uncontrollable things. While I still love the race environment, I see myself slowing fading out of racing. I'll probably do the same 2 marathons a year just because I love them that much, but I have bigger plans for myself.
As I was running my 15 miler yesterday, I had this thought that I had in mile 8 of my FIRST half marathon. I had always wanted to run a full marathon but for some reason, even as I was training for my first half, I kept telling myself that there was no way I'd run a full. A half was good enough. But as I was saying, around mile 8 of my first half marathon I had the thought of, "I totally could finish this half and then turn right around and run BACK to where I started." I didn't but even after finishing the half marathon, I still felt that way. Running a marathon wasn't as scary as I thought. I have now run 8 marathons. When I finished my 15 mile run yesterday I had the thought of "I could totally go and run another 15 mile loop" and that got me excited! I have plans to run a 50k in Decemeber but why wait? Why not build up to it now!? So that's my goal this summer. I haven't made a training plan so I may or may not hit 50k before my marathon but I am still going to train, and taper when it's time, in these weeks leading up to the marathon. I am really excited about this. I feel like I'm actually training for something hard again. Don't get me wrong but after so many marathons, it gets boring! Just trying to get motivated to run again!
