Although I am scheduled to run on Tue/Thu/Sat, I was unable to squeeze in my 3rd run of week three in on Saturday. This was due to the 6.8 mile hike I referenced in my previous blog post that I lead on Saturday morning in the Shenandoah mountains. I wasn’t in the mood to get up at 6am and run before the hike since I’d stayed up past mdt on Friday at Literary Elly May's birthday party and I was too tired to complete the run after returning from the 5 hour hike in the afternoon. I promised myself I’d tackle the run Sunday.
Was that the dumbest idea ever? (Answer: YES). I was SO SORE from the hike due to the constant inclines/declines that I could barely move on Sunday morning or afternoon, much less run. Late in the evening I realized that a derailment in my running program based on my “feelings” (no matter how legitimate) could snowball into giving myself permission to skip running for whatever lame reason I managed to come up with in the future. I struggle a lot with self-discipline and do not want to lose any momentum that my regimented schedule of running has going so far. Therefore, I forced myself to do some stretching and laced up my shoes for my run.
Hubby decided to accompany me and promised to go at my pace (he normally runs at 7mph) and encourage me. We ran on my new favorite course – the trail at Jennie Dean park (it has a few hills which I think are important for training) and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, during the middle of the run I realized my achy-from-hiking legs were less so and I felt calm and free.
During the second 3 minute run segment my calves seemed to lock up right after the small hill and I had to slow to a walk. I was very disappointed and started chanting “failure” under my breath and crying during the next 20 seconds while continuing to walk. Hubby wasn’t having any of this failure nonsense- he said I was doing great and gently encouraged me to do one final push and start running again and I was able to. Had to reach down deep to make it happen, but I did it. I’m a perfectionist so my first instinct after the run was to write the entire session off as failure and plan to repeat w3d3 again on Tue, but husband has me convinced that one 20 second deviation from the run is ok given the circumstances and I should proceed to W4D1 on Tues.
Overall it was really nice to have him coaching me during the run, especially as I needed an extra push of encouragement last night. It won’t be a permanent arrangement as he runs much faster than my 5.5-6mph pace and also because I find I like to get lost in the music during cool down and that’s difficult with someone making noise walking/talking next to me. He disrupted my zen moment. :)
I realized after we returned home that hubby had not cleared my GarminFR60 watch after his last run, so his run Sunday morning merges right into mine Sunday evening in the log. My stats begin (and his end) around the 40 minute mark on the charts: Garmin Connect. It’s clearly easy to discern his run from mine in the charts due to the dramatic speed differences and also because he’s not doing any intervals, but just a straight shot of running for 30+ minutes.
While I am proud of myself for exhibiting such self-discipline last night, I am paying for it physically today. I am sore again this morning, probably even more so that I was yesterday morning. It is going to be a day of taking it easy.
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