Friday, February 18, 2011

A Tough Week – Jacqui

Five weeks down and only nine more weeks until I run in the Boston Marathon! I need to keep making statements like this so that I actually start to believe the realness of it all. This was a HARD week for me. My late entry is proof of this, as I felt that I had very little positive things to write about. This week’s mileage was 27 miles, almost one mile over what I will do in ONE run on that fateful day in April. Now those of you who are runners may not understand this, but I am sure that the rest of you are with me on this one: 26.2 miles is a REALLY long distance to run! That is the kind of distance that takes some time even in a car. All along I had been convinced that I would slowly get used to running longer and longer distances and that come April, 26.2 miles would not seem so insanely far. Yes I have been slowly ramping up the distances, but no I haven’t come anywhere near getting used to it!

This week’s long run was a half marathon, which is three miles longer than last week’s long run. To say that the run was very hard would be an understatement. I did complete my goal, which was to run a 12-minute mile snail pace and to only walk for a half mile every five miles. Upon completion of the run I quickly showered and got in the car to meet up with my family for a party. I got extremely nauseated while in the car and it lasted for a good 20-30 minutes beyond my arrival. I also had multiple severe toe pains. I was basically a wreck and it was only half the distance of the marathon!

This was very disheartening to say the least. I was demoralized, exhausted and in a whole lot of pain. The next day I slept a lot and I drained the blisters under my toenails, which provided much relief of my toe pains. I also decided to take the next two days off from my regimen to get back on my feet – literally. I was secretly afraid that I had begun to give up. It wasn’t until week six began that I started feeling like myself again. I don’t know if it was the extra sleep or the lack of excruciating toe pain, but something happened that made me want to get back into my running shoes again. I rearranged my running schedule for week six so that my weekly mileage was not affected by my two-day break. I was able to arrange things so that I only lost one day of exercise and it was only a cross-training day. I also realized that week six should be slightly easier as it will be the first week that I am not on the accelerated running schedule. When I first found out that I was going to run Boston, the marathon was only 14 weeks away. I was unable to find a running plan for non-runners for that short of duration. I guess bells and sirens should have gone off in my head at this point, but instead I modified the first five weeks of an 18-week schedule. I tweaked the schedule to ramp up my workout every week instead of every other week until I caught up with the 18-week schedule. Now this will be the first week that I will have a whole extra week to get used to a regimen before it advances again. Week six here I come!

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