Sunday, March 11, 2007

Today Was Hard

Yesterday was a coached run where I hoped to finally get up to 5miles. Rather than run with the team I attended the memorial service of a friends mother. What a great tribute to an amazing woman. It was a good choice but I had to make up for the run on my own.

Today started with the loss of an hour due to daylight savings time. I drove to my highschool track and maped out a 2.5 mile course that would include some hills - that seemed to take forever. Finally I began my run and once I hit the long straight away I was booking, feeling good and making some progress. The first leg was great. Then a wall I couldn't bust through. Run a bit... walk. Run a bit... walk. I wasn't picking up any momentum and just felt more & more tired. My legs hurt. I felt sleepy. The sun was getting stronger & hotter. I was running alone with no encouragement.

Next weekend I'm supposed to run in a 7 mile race. A real race. From Sausalito to SF. I hope the crowd & the adrenaline make a big difference. Otherwise, I'm in big trouble.

Advice? How do I get beyond what I know I can do? How do I push through the pain & exhaustion at mile 4?

The good news is that the pain in my muscles from strength training is gone!

3 comments:

EM said...

When I hit a wall or am running by myself i like to imagine people that I know (living and dead) running beside me and cheering me on. Maybe it's really a way of getting in tune with those you love even when you can't physically see them, they're always there!

elainepill said...

you gotta press through, it's hard, but i know you can do it! whne you get to the longer runs, you will notice a rhthym to your lower engery moments. when i figured out my "ctcle" (so to speak), i would sip some gu or powergel about 10 minutes before i was going to bonk a little. that really helped.

you may not figure this out until you are running more that 6 or so miles.

i also used to sing songs from BREAD camp to myself to get through the tough parts. :-)

elainepill said...

god, i suck at spelling, don't i?

i blame the fact that i've been working on gathering our tax stuff.