After a frustrating week, this is exactly what I needed to complete my second week of marathon training! It was just one of those "I can do anything I put my mind to" kind of days...
I spent the majority of this past week sick with a cold. I had a serious lack of energy and, unfortunately, the last minute details of my son's second birthday party took every last ounce of the limited energy I did have. I was certainly disappointed to not get in a single run since Monday, but I had to accept the fact that my body just wouldn't have been able to handle it. By the time I regained enough energy to run, there just weren't enough hours in the day to fit it in.
So, here I am... it's Sunday and the last day of training for this week. I almost had myself convinced that I shouldn't go ahead with the long run I had scheduled thinking I should probably take it easy. Then I remembered that I'd taken it easy all week and now was not the time to become a slacker. So I bundled up in my winter running gear and headed for the great outdoors (well, I guess the sidewalks of my subdivision don't exactly qualify as the 'great outdoors', but I'll take anything over 7 miles on the treadmill). The newest addition to my cold weather running gear is a pair of running gloves that my ever-supportive hubby bought for me. I didn't think I'd like wearing them, but was surprised to find that they were absolutely perfect... just warm enough to keep my poor fingers from freezing and still light enough to keep them from sweating.
I gave serious thought to running at a slower pace, but again, my lack of training this week made me feel like I'd earned the right to really push myself. I checked my watch at every mile, mostly to make sure I didn't start off faster than I could handle. I was right around a 9:30 pace for my first two miles and really felt like I could keep that pace for the entire run. I was pleasantly surprised at the half way point when I noted my time was about 33:00 and that I still felt like I could keep that pace going. I was pleasantly surprised that the second half of my run was even faster than the first. I'm guessing that my insistence on increasing my speed when I'm on the treadmill has made this a possibility for me. Of course, one might argue that it actually suggests I'm not starting off as fast as I should be, but it's pretty amazing how your body works and what you get used to and I'm a pretty big fan of finishing faster than I started. It doesn't hurt the ego to have faster splits at the end of a long run :)
So, even though I trained for all of one day this week, I can honestly say that I still feel I did pretty well. I'm sure that it doesn't make up for all of those missed miles, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm not at all disappointed with my week. I gave my limited workouts all I had and I'll take that over a handful of uninspired workouts any day :)
And now there's just 16 weeks to go...
No comments:
Post a Comment