With the Star Wars Half in mid January and me not running since April, I knew that getting my training schedule started early would be important so September 1st marked Day 1 of Half Marathon training for me.
I actually had my running schedule booked into my Outlook calendar for several months now. I planned ahead and took the time to schedule individual runs 3 days a week from September through January. They are even specially color coded and contain lots of exclamation pointed reminders to get me motivated.
The First also marked my first day back to tracking seriously with Weight Watchers again. For about the last year I have been half-assing it and tracking maybe 4 days a week (if at all). My weight sucks right now, and I’m not happy about it. I’m not in a bad place, and can get the weight back off easily, I just have to pay attention and work at it. I’d like to be back to my “happy” weight in time for the half marathon, but I’m not going to stress on it too much. I know when I amp up my training I will need more fuel to keep my body going so I can’t be full on “diet mode”. I also don’t want the holidays and training to be an excuse to binge and eat all the things. This week I made it 5 days of honest tracking….and then…well…I’ll explain later.
A lot of this training and the Half Marathon itself will be more mental for me than physical. I’m very confident that my body will be able to take me across that finish line (as long as I take good care of it). But it’s my mind that will be my biggest hurdle to overcome. When I drew up my training calendar I did a lot of research and grabbed lots of other example schedules to work off of. Many of them had the longest run being 10 or 11 miles prior to race day. I didn’t like that. I want to be able to know that my body can do a minimum of 13 miles before I set foot in California. I also want to enjoy my time on the course too. I’m paying a lot of money for this race, and I don’t want to be a miserable mess the entire time. So I created my own training schedule and will run upwards of 13 miles several times prior to the official race. I also don’t want to be self concious or unhappy with my body while running or posing for photos, so that’s another reason I want to drop some weight before the race too.
So Monday I started with 3 miles (easy). I told myself to go slow and just get into the groove of things. I was also running in a brand new pair of shoes so I wanted to take it as easy as possible. The husband tagged along for a bit on his bike which was nice. The run was tough, but I got through it.
Then Wednesday I had planned on spending 30 minutes on the elliptical but it was a beautiful sunny day so I opted to run instead. Big mistake. Huge. I ran alone with my own thoughts to keep me company and spent the whole time just beating myself up. I could feel my thighs rubbing together, I could see my muffin top in my shadow on the road in front of me, I felt people looking at me and judging me for how slow I was going. It was just unhappy and uncomfortable. I did almost 3.5 miles in over 40 minutes. Back in April I was just about to break my record and run a 5k in under 30 min. So yea, I beat myself up a lot over that.
Then the weekend hit and I had a bit of a mental breakdown and couldn’t get out of bed. I tried. But I just couldn’t do it. The husband had to physically drag me up and get me moving for our regularly scheduled “Date Night” on Saturday. I barely made it. I cried 3 times just trying to get dressed. He took me to my favorite local brewery for dinner and beers followed by ice cream and that helped a little. (If you’re in the Portland area, you have to go to Salt & Straw for ice cream. It’s amazing. I can’t get enough.) Sunday I didn’t even bother to try and run. The husband didn’t event bother to make me. He could see I needed to hide from the world for anther day so brought me coffee in bed and let me be. I’m still not back to myself yet, but I’m working on it. Seriously people, dperession is real, and ugly, and hard.
So today I will hit the pavement for 4 miles instead of the 3 that are planned to make up for the 4 that I didn’t do on Saturday. Then Wednesday I will need to do 4 again. I have plans to go to Seattle on Friday and Saturday so my long run of 5 miles will have to be done on Sunday. Unless I get out of this slump and get super motivated, wake up at 6 AM on Friday, run 5 miles, shower, then get in my car before 8 to make it to Seattle by lunch time….we will see. For now, this week is just about being gentle with myself which is easier said than done.
I’ve added a reminder to my calendar to write up quick recap posts for my training each week. Mostly to keep myself accountable, but we will see how that goes. We all know I suck at blogging on the regular.
xoxo
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