I'm sort of hitting the mental wall right now. I think part of it is that there's just been so much treadmill work. You can see how much more excited my posts are when I actually get to run outdoors. But I think another part of it is just how much of an impact the training has on your other life commitments and the people around you. It's not just those couple of hours on Saturday or Sunday morning -- it's the early to bed, no social life on Friday or Saturday night. It's the afternoon of "Ow" after your long. It's the realization that it's already feeling hard and you still have double-digit miles to go till you hit 26.2. And I think it's also the realization that this is the way it's going to be for another two months.
It also didn't help my mental state that yesterday's cross-training workout was the pits. Jackie and I hit WOW while Carol was at her riding lesson. (First World Problems, right?) You know, we'd done a little celebrating for Valentine's Day, and that led us both to have poor nights sleep. Morning ibuprofen shook out the cobwebs, but I think it can only solve so much. My core stuff went pretty well, but lifting did not. Weights I know I can put up I had tons of trouble with. And eventually, I just realized I wasn't feeling it and gave up. For her part, Jackie was doing well on the belt until nature called -- urgently -- about 20 minutes in. Total workout killer.
That left me in a crabby mood for the balance of Saturday, at least till we had dinner out with our kids -- something we don't get to do very often anymore, now that Andrew Jr. is on his own. Nonetheless, I was a bit concerned about how I'd do on a long run on Sunday, especially on the belt.
For some reason, those fears were nearly confirmed early on. Inside the first mile, I started feeling a little bonk-ish. But I pushed through that a bit, because I figured unless something were truly wrong, that was probably just glycogen deficiency. (I actually tried a Gatorade G1 packet right before I went into PF, but I guess it hadn't kicked in yet.) And I was right. I slammed through the first hour no problem. At about 8, I started feeling a little tired, but nothing I'm not used to. It started being a real slog when I hit double digits. But still nothing I can't handle. By about the half-marathon mark, though, I was pretty bushed and thinking about calling it quits. That's where you have to keep on pushing. That's where the work actually gets done. Especially for marathon training, where your true fat-burning and cardio work gets done in the 90- to 180-minute window. That's where you teach your body to pull in fat stores, since your glycogen is all gone. And when your body learns how to do that, you get stronger.
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| Sorry I don't have a good pic. |
That all said, the last half-mile or so, I was hanging on for dear life. I just kept telling myself, "OK, hang on for four minutes." Then three. Then two. And I made it. 15 motherflippin' miles.
I'm hoping that this week's warm-up will melt off enough snowpack that I'll be able to run outdoors soon. At this point, the issue isn't the weather itself -- it's that there's nowhere safe to run. I'm also thinking of tossing in an extra short run this week -- nothing major, but I would really like to put a dent in the deficit from my lost week. I'll definitely monitor how I feel closely, and I'm certainly not doing anything tomorrow.
Post script: We went food shopping a little while after I got home from PF and tapped out this blog entry. About halfway through, I totally felt like I was going to bonk. Moral of the story: Unless the plan is to collapse on the couch after a long run, I have to be sure to put back both protein and carbs.
Total miles since starting the blog: 334.6
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