As my 10 year old son would say, Epic Fail, I usually reserve my epic fails for race day. Today's workout was pretty key for me both physically and mentally. I've been struggling a bit this week, just tired and not feeling quite right but I thought I'd be able to get through it at least, turns out I couldn't.
I remember the very first race I ran was the Canyonlands 1/2 marathon, this was a long time ago, even before I considered myself a "runner" and I remember seeing the lead guys take off and were a 1/2 mile down the road before I even crossed the start line and I thought to myself 'Wow, those guys are going like 10mph, I wish I could run 10mph" lucky for me I didn't know they were actually going closer to 13mph. Anyway, when I started getting serious about running my goal was to run 10 miles straight in less than 1 hour. At the time it seemed daunting turns out it's even harder than I imagined back then. Even in my best shape I've only accomplished it a few times. Twice in downhill 1/2 marathons, once in a full marathon, and maybe 2-3 times on the treadmill during a workout. I guess 10 mile LT runs just don't come up a whole lot when marathon pace is less than that. So this year when I started training for Boston I told myself that a 10 mile run in less than 1 hour would be the indicator that I was finally back, I put the workout down twice on my calendar, once today, and again in 2 weeks. I ran a 1 mile warmup, stopped and stretched, took a quick drink and started the run. Decided to just run it flat 10mph instead of trying to progress, started out fine, my HR was high but I'm used to my HR surging at the beginning of a tempo, the problem was it never calmed down, usually I can get my breathing and HR under control after about 5 minutes but today I couldn't. at 15 minutes 2.5 miles I realized it wasn't going to get easier and I just pulled the plug. After a minute I tried to just start backup at slow marathon pace but realized after 2 miles I was probably just hurting myself more than anything so I just all together quit and went to the elliptical for 20 minutes. Pretty disappointed, I'll give it another try in 2 weeks but for now I just need to figure out what's gone wrong with me. More sleep I suspect would help. One more thing that's got me down. I have pretty much worked with my best friend since Jr. High Dave since I got out of college 20 years ago, we have worked at 3 different companies together and pretty much have always gone where the other goes. Well, the travel finally got to him and he is going to accept another job. I'm happy for him but it's going to be really hard for me. I know, kind of sappy but I'm kind of in a funk right now about the whole thing.
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