The Bad Times

Today's Running World Quote was:

"It takes faith and the courage to risk failure in order to realize one's destiny. Having had my share of failures throughout my career I know that it is well worth the risk." - Ryan Hall, American long distance runner and winner of the 2008 United States Olympic Marathon Trials

I love this quote. It really hit home after the past few weeks I have had. 

This explains a lot of my lack of posting. 

"Drama" is exactly how I'd characterize what's been going on. I'd love to divulge everything (not) but it involves tears, yelling, alcohol and honestly a little loss of dignity on my part every once in a while.  

Don't worry, you can just go watch an ABC-no-so-Family show and it will be about the same. 

Anyway the drama has caused some sidetrackedness in my focus on training. I'm still doing it but it's been more of a mind numbing get-away-from-everything thing, causing me to not want to post about it. 

On top of my 'drama' I had one of the worst runs of life on Sunday.  I had skipped my long run last weekend due to, surprise, drama and drinking, and so I was excited to get back to a 10 miler on Sunday.  I had eaten breakfast with some friends early in the morning and headed out around 2pm so I could have plenty of time to digest my food.  I felt perfectly fine when I left. Excited to run, had on new clothes, it was a beautiful day in Atlanta at a high 60's low 70's temp with some wind. 

Well I got to about mile 2.5 and realized something wasn't quite right. My legs weren't shaking that dead feeling. I chalked it up to a few days of not running and they were just stiff but I couldn't get rid of it. By mile 4.5 I was in the Virginia Highlands and had stopped. I was sitting on a bench with absolutely dead legs and a stomach ache just to add to it. My lungs were on fire and everything felt like it was falling apart.  I knew I wasn't going to make 10 miles that day, I was praying just for 8 at the rate I was going. I texted my roommate with a warning text of "this isn't going so hot" just in cased I needed her to come get me.

Yeah, I felt THAT bad. 

So I kept going, forced myself at least, slowly, and told myself that if I could just keep going and walk some/rest I'd make it through. 

The next 3.5 miles were the worst miles ever. 

I've never thrown up from working out but I was pretty damn close, and I actually WANTED to. I wanted to throw up so bad thinking it would make me feel better. Anything to make me feel better. I kept waiting for a second wind but no. And of course when you're in the middle of Atlanta you're smack in the middle of a MILLION and one hills. Steep, long hills. 

I somehow made it back to campus and when my Garmin watch hit 8 miles I just stopped. And I walked home. Walked. I've never done that in my life. It was miserable. I was miserable. I felt like such a  failure. And the half is only 3 weeks away! I was supposed to be throwin out 8 miles like nothin. 

My legs just did not want it. And I had to listen on Sunday. 

Maybe it's been the alcohol, which honestly hasn't been much because if any of y'all knew me you knew I can get a hangover from 2 beers and be hammered in 1. Maybe it's all this drama, or school, or the stress I've been putting on myself lately but it's just been a rough few weeks of training. My Monday run was sucky as well. Legs hadn't recovered yet but I knew I needed to get the miles in. 

Anyway back to the applicable quote for the day. I guess this is all of my failures right now. I keep fighting the failure feeling. I have to shake it because I start taper in 8 days and then it's race time. I've been working way too hard to let this feeling take me down.

So it's time to push the personal shit out of my mind and get it all done and get back to running happy instead of this moody gloomy running.

Day 2/3

Ok sorry I didn't post yesterday. School may or may not be killing me right now. 

Yesterday was day 2 of training and involved a light 3-4 mile run. I got up at 6 was out on the turf fields by 6:30 running laps. 

Who ever thought running laps was fun? Goodness gracious it's 3 laps to a mile. By lap 5 I was getting dizzy. Mind you these are big laps but still. Ridiculously boring. 

Anyway I'm not sure what pace I was at since my BF has lost his garmin watch charger....failure...but I think I was a little under 11 min/mile. Which is exactly where I'm ok sitting. I know now that to get up into those double digits I'm not going to be able to just run my little heart out at whatever pace I want. The 3 miles felt like nothing! The good news is the weather has gotten considerably better here in Atlanta. Especially in the morning. I actually had to pull out my running pseudo leggings and a sweater. It's amazing how little you sweat in the cold versus the heat. Until I stopped running, then I started pouring sweat out from every pore. 

Speaking of sweat, just to ramble about things I've learned since running.

                                                     

These (sock-ish-things stage Left)are the most amazing things EVER if your shins hurt (lightly). Once upon a time I tried to run and ignored my shins. This ignorance resulted in stress fractures and put me out of the game for 4 months. These are compression thingys. You can buy them with socks attached so that they're literally compression socks but I bought them to wear when I sleep to help my shins not feel so battered. I scoffed at the 40$ price tag but they were so worth it, especially when my shin splints were beginning to plague me again. Now I always wear them the night before runs.  Plus they're warm. Who doesn't want warm calves in the winter?

Back to the sweat. Stage right is my new (as of when I began running) deodorant. I may or may not sweat a lot. It's a problem. And not very cute, says the BF. He gave me this. It's men's deodorant. This was a conflict at first for me but DAMN does it work well. It is now my every-day deodorant. Seriously, if you sweat or stink like I do, this is for you. It's the best investment I've ever made. Those girly little deodorants don't hold a candle to this stuff.

Ramble done. Today is a weight lifting day. After a failed meeting this morning at the god-awful time of 5:45am I will be going later today. After I study system dynamics and heat transfer until my brain explodes. No worries, that won't take too long!

Tomorrow is a 4 mile run, I think I'll run to Piedmont park and back. Now that my feet and ankle are feeling much much better I'm willing to run some (aka a shit ton) of hills to get to the park. Hopefully my legs hold up.

This is me being lame and showing off my frogtown medal. 

I ended up 23rd overall in Women and 77th overall in men and women of 331 participants. Not too shabby eh? I also averaged an 11 min/mile, which for the amount of walking involved to get up the trail hills and get across the log crossings is pretty damn good in my opinion.

Off to study. Happy Running everyone!

The Uber Planner

First order of business: I won my first running medal! I placed second in my age group (for women) and 23rd over all (for women). Frogtown is definitely one of the most fun races I'll ever run. 

I got a medal, a shirt, and a lot of free swag as well as a sore ankle from nearly busting ass on the rough trails. I LOVED IT. 

Second order:

So yesterday, while I was hungover from a  night of debauchy celebrations with The BF, I made my half-marathon training plan. Randomly too. I just needed to see it on paper. So I pulled out my fancy super-awesome-super-fine-point-super-nerdy color pens and went to work.  I only have a little over 7 weeks to do this. Fingers cross I can manage it, but since I put it down on paper it feels a lot more manageable.

Long runs on Saturday morning, goal longest is 11ish. Jeez, double digit numbers scare the hell outta me! I've calculated all my long run and tempo run paces...laid out my cross training. Now It's time to get to work. Starting today with a few miles and some time in the pool.

I'm not sure if I'm giving myself enough time for this or not but I think I can do it. It may not be the fastest half ever or the most comfortable but I need to start somewhere and I need to just push myself to start training at all. 

Here's to hoping all goes well!

10$ Margarita Pitchers: AVOID

Friday marked a wonderful day of the beginning of a free weekend. Free of the robot I've been working on for a long time now.  My team and I, all suited up for success, only had a few more hours before we were done and I knew afterward I would most likely be finding somewhere to consume bountiful amounts of alcohol.  I also knew my usual Saturday morning long run was probably out of the question.

Murphy's Law was our name. Ultimately our downfall..

The Arenas.  They look silly right?
The colors made me feel kiddish.

I'll be the first to say I absolutely love this class but DAMN is it time consuming. It's finally a hands on ME class with coding, machining, tinkering, trash talking and presenting.

Jeeves prepared for battle

The trash talking was mostly done by the boys.  In a class with only 4 girls out of 35 of course any competitive atmosphere is going to turn into a "my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours".  Luckily I had four other teammates to let do that so I didn't have to.

My team left me to fix Jeeves.
Picture thanks to BF

Anyway, it was stressful.  Lots of technical difficulties. Lots of yelling.  No cussing though, that would be a DQ (Wow was this a hard one for me).  All in all it was good clean competitively mean fun.

Is there even is such a thing?

The BF and I went out for mexican and some margaritas at La Fonda and were pleasantly surprised by 10$ pitchers.

Oh buddy do I love margaritas.  I however 1) do not drink anymore and cannot hold my alcohol and 2) have very adverse effects to lots of sugar.  Two pitchers later I was stumbling around in my too-tall-heels and thinking "this is going to hurt tomorrow".  I didn't get out of bed until 11 and proceeded to live off of Powerade Zero and saltines for the first few hours of the day.
Obviously I didn't run that morning, or do much of anything that entire day.

My plan was to get up Sunday then and run with the BF for a long, slow, loving and recovering 6 miles. The alarm went off at 7 and we proceeded to wake up at 9. And I woke up with a headache and backache. I ended up relaxing by the pool for a few hours and read on BF's couch-ton (the couch-futon)...so this was an anti-running weekend.  Actually this was more of an anti-productivity weekend.

I ran this morning (oucchh) , I'll discuss it later after I mull over a post I've been thinking about for a while: my likes and dislikes of becoming a runner.