That. Was. Bad.
I don't know what else to say. The plan was 10 miles with 5 at 15K pace. We were going to go 2 mile warm up. 5 Miles LT and then 3 miles cool down. Sounds good. Not so much as by the time we got to 3.5 miles I was done. I had nothing left in my legs and I just could not go on. I don't know if it because we did the first two miles too fast (8:33 and 8:04) or if it's that my sleep schedule is still all screwed up or my nutrition is still in the dumps. We ran another 1.5 miles slowly and then walked a bit and then jumped in the lake which was actually nice. After that it was 4 miles of walk of shame back home with all the runners merrily zooming past us.
When my running is bad I don't know what to do. It's usually the only thing in my life that I can do well and when I lose that I feel like I have lost everything. Work right now is in a holding pattern and sleep and eating is done just because I know I'm supposed to and neither one is being done well or with any consistancy.
My friend Clayton from college e-mailed me today with an update of what he and his girlfriend Kendra have been up to. These two people are two of the most inspirational people that I have had the good fortune to know. Clayton worked at Harvard after we graduated taking his double major in astronomy and computer science and worked on NASA stuff. After about a year however he left all that and moved to Maine to start work as an organic farmer. He loves it. It's hard and they don't know what they are doing yet....but they love it. They named their farm Fail Better Farm which was taken from an essay by Samuel Beckett. The excerpt is :
`Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'I love this quote. It is all encompassing of running in my opinion. We have decided to try the workout again tomorrow morning and go from there.
For now I am going to go curl up in bed and pretend that today didn't happen. So much for shining happy Leah Runner.
10 comments:
OMG!!! Hello honey? Are you in there? You 2 are quite inspirational yourselves! Cheer up! You're smart, your one hell of a runner, you're cute as a button, AND...Gosh darnit...we like YOU!! :-)
You will pull out of your rut. Just remember why you do all this running stuff... because it is fun and makes you who you are. Rest your mind and you will come back energized for your next run.
Come on! Listen to RR! You are doing AWESOME!
Thanks for all the nice comments.
It wasn't just Leah or anything, btw. I was sucking wind badly at the start of the lactic threshold miles and knew that I would never finish as I was completely dead halfway through the first mile. Maybe something was in the air at Stately Wayne Manor?
Ryan - I agree with the fun part. We've lost the fun part of running and the motivation is way down. We've got to get over the burnout and start having fun again. I think it will start with eating right and sleeping more and then maybe we can string together a few good runs.
Great quote!
Sorry, boss walked by... :)
I also wanted to tell you that you two are great runners. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
You guys are great!
How hot was it yesterday? You did not say what time you tried to run but around here it was brutal yesterday. I potponed my five mile recovery until Thursday.
When you don't have the mental game working (and ohhhh how I have been there) and the heat and humidity is beating down on you. You know it's just hard, really hard. It will get better. Smile and be happy.
My unsolicited two cents: you guys ran your warmup miles too fast. Based on reading your posted running splits, your warmup miles should be in the 9:00/m range, not 8:30 or 8:00. Depending on the temperature when you ran, you may have already been at or close to your LT pace during your second warmup lap.
I also see your easy pace (GA pace) runs getting faster too (< 9:00/m). Its certainly possible that you are doing these runs too fast also. Maybe even your recovery runs also.
Perhaps if you moderated your pace a bit on your GA, recovery and warmup running, you'd be in a better position to kick ass on the hard parts of the plan.
- Berner
berner-
thanks for the advice. i agree that the pace in the first two miles was too fast. I don't knwo what the temperature was, we went out around 6pm, so maybe it was still in the mid 80s.
I'll try and work on my pacing for my other runs and see how things go next week.
You are so right! That quote is great.
And I feel the same way. When my running is bad, I'm sort disillusioned for a short while. Until I realize that there is always tomorrow.
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