Sunday, April 19, 2009

Come On, Legs

The Flying Pig half marathon is May 3rd. At two weeks away, this weekend was my last time to do a long run before the race. It was a beautiful weekend, but unfortunately, it was an ugly run. As soon as I left the driveway, I knew it was going to be bad. My legs felt like they were full of sand. My breathing was way too hard for as slow as I was going. And the effort also felt really hard for as slow as I was going. I wasn't looking forward to 11 miles of this difficulty. But I knew that if I didn't do it, I'd regret it and suffer more at the race. So I quickly threw out any hopes of maintaining a certain pace and kept telling myself I just have to cover the distance. Which I did, minus one mile, painfully.

After the first 3 miles I felt like I had already ran 10. Anything that wasn't downhill felt like uphill. Half way through I stopped and took a break. I sat down, but really wanted to lie down. I ate my gel and drank some water. Then I started back to home, which made me feel better - at least I was on my way back. I could smell the stable! For a mile or so I felt a lot better. Then everything seemed to pile up again and I had no energy. So I walked occasionally and stopped for breaks. My pace was a crawl by the end. I made myself go to 10 miles, feeling that would be enough mentally. There was no sense in pushing myself one more mile to go the planned 11 when I was hating it so much. It just wasn't my day.

I felt fine later. My legs and body just didn't cooperate with me that morning. I guess their idea for a fun morning was to curl up in the sun with a good book and a cup of coffee instead of my eager idea to go run 11 miles. I just hope they join forces with me the day of the race!

1 comment:

Butch said...

Yep, my body has been telling me that for years. Why run, you only get there faster and you might miss something really nice on the way.

You may be just as happy with 5K's as with mini's.

Bodies don't lie, I know, but we do lie to our bodies. Again, I know.