Awww you guys are soooo nice for saying awesome things about my February mileage! Way too kind. Each of your comments have made me smile 🙂
Which I’ve been needing lately. I don’t know what it is exactly but I’ve been in a horrible funk. I hate making excuses but I think that the grueling semester, grueling training schedule and everything life related has practically beaten me down. I still have some fight in me (hence why I don’t feel like I’m making excuses completely) but man, it is tough to make myself get going and do what I need to do. Nothing really serious or anything (I’m not staying in bed all day or anything) but it’s just been difficult to motivate myself.
I think it’s that time of the semester AND of training where this is suppose to happen. School-wise it’s always tough right before spring break (T-9 days!!). And running wise I need to keep in mind that I’ve been going at this for almost 10 full weeks. I’ve been pushing and going hard every week (I was going to say every day and that might be true even if it’s not physically hard per se). It’s that point where the actual race isn’t in sight yet BUT I’m so far into the training program that it’s all I can remember.
So while I feel like I just made a bunch of excuses for why I’m in a funk I’m also being proactive in trying to change it by attempting to sleep more, set myself up for success with my quality runs, and making time to watch my favorite shows with my friends. It’s kind of working which is why I said earlier that I have some fight in me.
Another part of my funk is the weather. It’s being soooo New England lately. You know the expression “if you don’t like the weather in New England just wait 5 minutes” Pretty basically what’s been going on and I was told today to not discount how that physically makes me feel (ie crappy). It ended up raining/snowing last night so the roads were slick and wet and I really didn’t want to deal with it. When I woke up this morning I just KNEW that the weather plus my mood was NOT going to allow me to run my tempo run optimally.
So for the 3rd day (out of 4 for March — which I was told by J that it’s the only day that commands you to do something. Think about it) I was on the TM. As much as I keep saying I don’t mind the TM I can’t do it so frequently! And I’ve been getting some questions about why I don’t use a track and it’s because my school doesn’t have an outdoor track. Sure we have an outdoor track team but they have drive to some high school or other college to use for track workouts. Trust me, I’d sooooooo be using a track if I could.
Anyway, despite my blahhh mood (because I’m sure that I could complain about it foreverrrr if I wanted to) I got in a great workout in. At least I think it was a good workout, my mind was just kind of floating around so I don’t really remember it haha. BUT I was able to feel really good post workout.
- 3.5 mile warm up
- 7.1 mile tempo @ 7:19
- 3.5 mile warm down
Total time: 112 minutes
Total distance: 14.1 miles
Average pace: 7:56
The tempo miles actually flew by. I set the TM to manual and inputted 52 minutes which I knew would give me slightly more than 7 miles which I was okay with. This way I didn’t have to keep checking the clock and could just keep running until the belt started to slow down. Muy Bueno.
I wanted to push the tempo another mile but I didn’t because my body was at the point where it was time to stop. This point is soooo subjective but I think that over the course of this training I’ve been able to read my body pretty well so I actually said out loud that I didn’ t need to go further and that doing so would be bad because my body had taken everything it needed out of this workout. Plus, like Tuesday, it was also the point where my ankle / shin was making itself known so it was the smart thing to stop and I even iced immediately after the run (yes it’s a plastic baggie surrounded by an ace bandage. I’m a college kid who is not part of a team, hence makeshift ice wrapping):
And I ran into a girl that I know who is on the swim team and she told me to just walk in boldly to the trainer’s office and ask to be seen. The one catch is that I would probably have to go during odd hours (like in between practices) because I’m not a school athlete. But she said that I’m working just as hard, if not harder, than some school athletes and that they would likely be willing to check me out. I’m going to try and fit it in but the hours I’d have to go are weird so I’m not sure at the moment if I’d have a class during that time. But I’m trying to be proactive about it even more than I am already.
And as much as I was kind of dreading the run I felt great afterward, like I really worked hard. I know that if I were to have tried this outside all my mental stuff would have shown so I set myself up for success again like last week. Now I totally think the best thing is to do tempos outside (I mean races aren’t done of the TM man) but sometimes I think that the mental aspect of running — ie me running on the TM and keeping my spirits up due to my funk — needs to be put before running in conditions. I think that I’ve run in enough bad conditions to feel prepped for Boston 😛
And check out this giveaway from Marcia!
