Broken Down

(Editor’s note: I currently have three separate blogs. I’ve decided that trying to come up with ideas for all three is just not going to happen. I’ll still keep the professional blog separate from this one, but you will now occasionally see a running post here. And with that...)

In my preparation for first half marathon I read quite a bit about the training process and how you’d hit different plateaus and struggle at times. But at least for me my experience didn’t match that at all. Certainly the training was hard, but I never once doubted that I could do it. The distances I had to run would occasionally worry me, but not to the point where I really thought I wouldn’t be able to finish it.

Well, that’s changed now that I’m training for the full marathon. I ran 18 miles on Saturday. And I don’t think I’ve recovered yet. I may be fighting something illness wise, or maybe a bit of dehydration, but I’ve just been wiped out these last couple of days. So much so that for the first time in as long as I can remember I bailed on a run partway through – I was only 1.66 miles into a 5 mile run. Add to that the fact that my calf and back are both aching, and this is not a happy runner.

I’ve made the decision already that I’m not going to do my run tonight, and I’m not going to make it up tomorrow.

That’s a hard sentence for me to type. In all my training I’ve been extremely diligent about getting out there and getting in my runs. But I really just can’t do it tonight.

And that sentence scares me.

I know I’ll get there. I know I’ll reread this post on June 6th and smile knowing that I made it. But right now it’s much harder to focus on that through the pain and the exhaustion.

Here’s my first training struggle. Let’s see what happens from here.

On the plus side, I’m loving my new running shoes. :-)