It's been, well, an interesting and busy week for me. Last you heard, I was getting ready to kick off my next half marathon training cycle. I vowed to do the cross training and actually stick to the plan this time. Shortly after my last blog, I went out to my garage/laundry area to swap the load and bring some clothes in. On the way in, I very slyly stepped into the house and used my opposite foot to swing the door shut behind me. This usually works for me. This time? Not so much. I felt a sting as the metal thingy on the bottom of the door hit the back of my heel/lower ankle. Ouch! Naturally, I didn't have a hamper so I just had this huge load of clean laundry balancing between my arms. I limped over to the couch, dropped the clothes, and checked the damage. OMG. It's about an inch long and pretty gnarly looking. I bandaged myself up and thought it was good. Then I tried wearing a pair of tennis shoes. Not good. Not good at all. Pain, serious pain....I was a little nervous about how my scheduled Tuesday run would go.
As luck would have it, Tuesday's run did not happen. I still couldn't wear regular shoes without limping a little, and my sister decided not to come home in the evening when I was supposed to run with my husband. (She stays home with the kids so we can leave.) Wednesday afternoon, my husband got off of work early in the day, and I laced up my shoes. I put about four bandaids over my boo-boo and off I went. Three miles on deck, three miles completed. It was not my best time ever, but considering I had hurt my stupid ankle, forgot my inhaler beforehand, and hadn't really run three miles in two months, I think it was pretty good. Every time I felt like just turning around and going home I thought of my husband's voice saying, "I just don't know if you can do it alone." It pissed me off a little bit, just enough motivation to keep going!!
Sunday I was slated to go for a four miler. In case you don't know, here in Sacramento we are raining. A lot. Looking outside yesterday morning I thought, 'there is no way I'm going out in this'. But I thought about it for a few hours and finally decided to go, no matter what. Just as I pulled my jacket on, I looked outside and realized it wasn't raining anymore! I hurried through my stretching and headed out. Now, I'm not really prepared for this running in the cold, potentially wet business. I wasn't sure what to do, so out I went with my tanktop, long sleeved DriFit top, and a Nike running jacket along with Mizuno ear warmers and some cheap cotton gloves. I didn't even make it a mile before I was ripping off the ear warmers. As my whole core started heating up, I started getting really uncomfortable. Shortly after I took off the ear warmers, off came the gloves which I shoved in my jacket pocket. Somewhere around mile two I stopped. I was hot, ridiculously hot. So I took off the jacket to try to devise a plan to run with it tied around my waist. I took off again, no luck. One pocket had my cell phone in it and the other side had my gloves and ear warmers. They were hitting my ankles and calves. I untied the jacket and tried rolling it up like a belt. I took off again, and this time the pockets flipped out of the "belt" and started hitting me in my hips. Arrgh! Highly uncomfortable and I'm sure super attractive. So the jacket went back on for the rest of the run. Running up Jefferson Blvd has a pretty decent sized hill (to me anyway) and I was able to truck it up the whole thing which I was pretty excited about. I hit a few sprinkles right around the three mile marker and thankfully that was it. Remarkably, I made it to the end in 50 minutes which put me at a 12:17 mile. Slow, but I don't think that it was too awful bad for my first long run with lots of stupid issues like overheating, a ton of wind, and my jacket drama.
Now I know that I really really need to keep up my endurance during these runs. To finish my next half marathon in 2:30 I need to push for 11:25 minute miles. I have done this before, but never on a run longer than 5 miles. I need to believe in myself, believe that I can do this. Stay dedicated, stay motivated, keep my feet moving.
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