Because of the hurricane (my second weather emergency last week), our long run was switched to Saturday. Now, I am nothing if not a routine-oriented person. I have my pre-run routine down pat, and it starts at about 5pm the evening before a long run with a salad and a large bowl of spaghetti with Classico Tomato & Basil sauce. I drink a ton of water, try to go to sleep early and get up at 5am the next morning to have enough time for coffee, food and travel to our starting point. Because we ran on Saturday, I wasn't able to follow my pre-run ritual. I was still at work at 5pm, not eating my pasta dinner. And then I went to happy hour and drank beer. I ate dinner late that night, stayed up reading until 1am and could barely drag myself out of bed at 5:15am. I was late leaving the house and couldn't find the parking lot we were supposed to meet. By the time I figured out where our starting point was, it was 6:55am, and the group was already at least 20 minutes ahead of me.
What I should have done was take off at my normal GAD pace, catch the group on their way back and just deal with having run a shorter distance than planned. What I did do was run the first 7 miles at 30-60 seconds/mile faster than my normal pace and completely skip walking water breaks. I caught up to my group right as they were turning around, meaning I would be able to do the entire distance. Meaning I was terrified that I was going to bonk at some point on the way back.
And you know what? I didn't. The run went fine. Because of this little exercise in what not to do I have realized that I am probably in the best shape of my life. Sure, my 15-miler was a little more challenging than some of my other runs, but it was by no means my worst run.
So here's to keeping up with my training schedule, despite my life being much busier now. Here's to going to sleep early the night before long runs. Here's to hydrating with water and smoothies and chocolate milk. I love the long run. I love the run.
This is my running schedule for the rest of the week:
No comments:
Post a Comment