« recovery to write home about | Main | the hard part of the week is over »
July 17, 2005
I am not mentally tough
Week 5 of the Plan included the first tiptoe into the 80s (mpw) and the first tempo workout I managed to run properly. But apart from the long run and the tempo run I mostly ran like a 300-pound 300-year-old, and I finally had to face the fact that I'm a real wuss, mentally.
This training plan includes a fair number of medium-long (12 - 17 mile) runs, and no matter the distance, once I get within 3 or 4 miles of the end I switch to full-on 5K mode, which is to say I am saturated with suffering and spend lots of time inventing reasons to slow, walk, or quit. I haven't done any of those (yet), but focussing on how bad I feel and how unfair the world is for making me run in this heat/pain/rain/dark/sun/whatever doesn't make the remaining miles very fun.
Yesterday my husband joined me for the last 3 miles of a 13-mile run, and he managed to drag my sorry ass out of the 8s for a little bit. It was a big surprise to me to be able to run that fast, because I'd just spent 3 or 4 miles convincing myself I was dying of heatstroke so it was ok to run 9:30s. Today I set out alone for a proper 16 miles (slow, faster, then even faster). I told myself beforehand that I needed to stop saving myself for later and just run the paces, and for the first 12 miles I actually did just that. But after stopping for water at 12 miles I lost most of my focus, and only managed to run hard every other quarter-mile for the remaining 4.
I hope this will pass. Or rather, I hope I will drag myself out of it. This is one area where running with people used to be helpful (back when I was running with people). Now that I run alone 99.98% of the time, I'll have to fix it myself.
Posted by joe positive at July 17, 2005 3:18 PM
Comments
I'm a much slower runner than you. When I first started running in races, in my training runs I was somewhat able to get on race pace at some time during my runs. Now however no matter how much I try and focus, I can not get any of my race pace during training. I wish I can figure it out...I just don't know how
Posted by: Dawn at July 17, 2005 4:39 PM