Week Twelve - Hole

Mileage (miles per workout): 5 - 5 - 10

I want to start this week with a story I heard one evening.

John fell into a hole too deep to climb out of by himself.  He looked up and saw a guy walking by.  “Hey!” he yelled, “Could you help me get out of here?”  The guy says sure and throws a rope down the hole and walks away.  That was no help.  John then sees a doctor.  “Hey!  Could you help me out of here?”  The doctor says sure, writes a prescription and throws it into the hole then walks away.  Still angered about being in that hole, John sees a friend walking by.  “Hey Paul!  Could you help me get out of here?”  Paul says sure and jumps down into the hole with John.  “What are you doing?  Now we’re both stuck in this hole.”  “Yes but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out,” replies Paul.

I mentally dug that hole this week.  I dug so deep that I couldn’t rescue myself.  I did it by eating and drinking poorly, thinking about how this behavior would impact my running and then dreading my runs because I knew I wasn’t going to perform my best.  The week definitely didn’t start that way.  I was feeling great and before I knew it the run was over.  That was Day One.

When I started to think about how there were only two hard weeks before the taper began was when I began to dread the running.  I let the days pass and put myself in a tough situation to make all the runs and stay on track.  So I skipped Day Two.

The weekend rolled around and that just meant the long run.  I no longer wanted to push myself.  I no longer wanted to be sore or work on all the things besides running to feel my best.  I didn’t want to have to think about what and when I was eating and drinking and how that would impact my training schedule.  I really just wanted my previous life back.

The long run only made it to ten miles.  A tad bit more than half of the 18 I was scheduled to run.  So there I was at the bottom of the hole.  I looked up and no one was walking by so I sat and thought awhile.

One of my first thoughts went to a friend of mine.  You could say she and I have been training for a marathon together.  We are following the same training schedule (her marathon being three weeks before mine always put her training mileage three weeks ahead of my training).  She had injured her hip awhile back and was cross-training to stay on track and take some pressure off her hip.

She had told me other people around her said it was okay that she let this marathon go and relax and then try again at a later time.  That wasn’t what she wanted to hear and so when my knee started giving me problems, she was the first one to not go soft on me and say it was okay to quit.

Then I remembered her marathon was this coming weekend.  As I offered her encouragement during her last week of training, it brought back the resolve in myself to finish my training.  I had come so far.  I was reinspired to make my actions speak louder than the demons in my head.

Things I learned this week:

First: Eat poorly.  Feel poorly.  Run poorly.  My love/love relationship with cheeseburgers should best be long distance.

Last: Gatorade now makes Gatorade Endurance.  And while it only comes in orange, the results definitely make it worth drinking.

 

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Continue reading - Week Thirteen