Today was rough. The run nearly killed me. Okay, it was the first ten minutes that nearly did me in, but that's ALWAYS the worst. It was a four-miler today so I didn't expect it to be too hard. I should have known better. For the past two or three weeks I've had some kind of upper respiratory crud. It won't go away. I just want it to GO AWAY! It leaves me coughing in the morning and evening, as well as waking me up several times during the night between 1 and 3. Not cool. Last night was particularly bad because I felt like my airway was constricted and I couldn't take a deep breath. Great for running, right?
The good part is that I completed the run. I ran at 6 mph for the first two miles, then knocked it down to 5.5 for the next mile and then to a 5 for the last mile. That made the last mile fairly doable. It was just the first mile that made me question why I'm doing this and whether I really want to continue. I'm hoping it's the breathing thing that is making running so difficult right now. I'm set to run six miles on Saturday and I really want to be successful with that. I try to remind myself that when I was getting ready to do 5k races I had the same trouble with wondering if it was worth it and why I wanted to do it. I completed that training so I tell myself it's the same thing with marathon training.
My fear now is that one of my two big obstacles will get in the way of finishing the training and completing the marathon. The first is my heel. It's been sore for quite a while and I'm not entirely sure about how to fix it. Sometimes I think it's a heel spur and other times it acts like the Achilles tendon is causing the problem. I don't know. The best I can do right now is gently stretch it out after warming up and then again after I finish the run. It hasn't gotten better but it hasn't gotten worse, either.
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| image via capilano.com.au |
The other obstacle is a running buddy. The long training runs I'll be doing on Saturdays would be much better done outside than on the treadmill. I'm not comfortable with the idea of running outside all by my lonesome. I don't feel safe and it makes me nervous. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does. That's just how it is. I'm unwilling to run outside by myself, particularly at the distances I'll be going. The real trouble is that I don't want to run a marathon badly enough to suck it up and run alone. If I can't find someone to run with me...well, that'll be the end of it and I'll have to figure out something else. I think there's one more person I'll try. If that doesn't work I suppose I could run around the block in my neighborhood. Over and over and over and over... you get the idea. The longest training runs are 18 miles and that would be 36 times around. Fun, huh? I suppose it's better than nothing. Wish me luck!
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