Saturday, March 26, 2011

Ups and downs

It's been a long week.

I did my Cupcake marathon last weekend and completed my 13.1 in 2:36.   I'm very happy to add this to my half marathon accomplishments. While it was more "long run" training than racing, it is still a better time than my last half which took me 3hours. In that regard, I PR'ed! :)

That's great but I have to admit that long run was tough on me. I was thrilled that the weather was nice enough to run outside but by mile ten I was hitting the wall.  I was sore, achey and the long run just felt like the longest run ever.

It wasn't that "gee I love to run" long run thing that I usually can muster. It was more like, "What the hell am I doing?" "How am I ever gonna run 26?"  UGH.

Even my six mile run on Monday was pretty blah… So blah that this was an actual Daily Mile comment:
I'm not even sure who Griffin is but he was right!


By the way, I was proud of myself for trying to make it a happier post by not adding the "blah face" smiley and by selecting the happy face icon. Guess that didn't help much! LOL (Oh and thanks Sara for the vote of confidence!)

Today I'm getting ready to run 14 and I feel dread. Why!? I don't want to feel dread. I want to feel challenged and excited to take them on… I'm hoping I find something during that 14 today - just not sure what.

I am in a fight with this negativity. I really am. I want to be Polly positive all the time. I have others that look to me for inspiration. I dig deep, I read inspiring quotes, I talk to like-minded folks. But like anything worth having, I guess it takes work sometimes. My old habits and thoughts die hard.

I'm also experiencing great anxiety about being properly trained in time - I'm not feeling confident about that. I have a lot coming up that is going to make getting all those miles in challenging.

All of it is overwhelming.

But. All I can do is take it a day at a time. Do what I can do today and let the rest fall where it may. Maybe I won't be "trained enough" but if I'm trained enough where I can jog, walk or crawl over the finish line without dying… well, I will still consider that a victory.

I realize that we all hit this wall from time-to-time and that a crappy run every once in a while happens. I guess it's what you do after them that matters.

The upside and the positive in all this negative is - I haven't given up. I am tempted to go shopping, watch TV, (uh, write this blog post) or do anything else but run 14 miles today. The old me would've said forget it. I'm done. This isn't fun anymore so I'm taking my iPod and going home. I'm not doing that. I'm still forging forward and giving it my best shot. And just savoring that push forward mentality for a moment is making me feel a wee bit better.

I've gotta go. I've got a few miles to run.

How do you bounce back from a few not so fun runs?

XO
Jen

6 comments:

Caroline said...

I hope it went well for you
for me, I try to remember that before the bad runs there were good ones...I go back and I look at my Garmin log and I see I can do better because it is all there!! also after a not so great long run, I do a short one the next day. Usually all is better and that helps with motivation.

Unknown said...

thanks so much Caroline! My long run today was much better :)

Michael said...

Sometimes you just have to push through - there are definitely days I just don't want to be out ther, but you do it anyway and usually afterward you are glad you did. You are doing GREAT!

Unknown said...

Thank you soooo much Michael… I so appreciate the comment. Today I'm so happy I pushed thru.

nikki said...

put a few new songs on your ipod...

nikki said...

you are superwoman!