{"id":1867,"date":"2015-10-12T21:23:58","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T01:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/?p=1867"},"modified":"2015-10-12T21:32:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T01:32:21","slug":"when-bad-runs-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/?p=1867","title":{"rendered":"When Bad “Runs” Happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning: this post quite possibly contains Too Much Information…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In my last post<\/a> I talked about how life can get in the way of marathon training. \u00a0I was thrown a few curve balls as I headed into my biggest week of training and while I did my best to keep up, if you total my mileage from last Monday to Sunday I came up about 10km short of the 76km goal. \u00a0Not only did I come up short, four of the five\u00a0runs were awful.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if the stress\/loss of sleep\/missed meals\/odd eating times that I experienced while my son was in hospital was the main factor, but my GI system went into full protest. \u00a0For 4 runs I could barely make it through 5 or 6k (sometimes much less) without desperately heading to a bathroom. \u00a0It was bad enough on the 11 and 13k mid-week runs, but was downright miserable on my long slow run on Friday. \u00a0I did get 31k done… eventually, <\/em>but to be honest it was just a series of short runs to bathrooms. \u00a0Thank goodness for grocery stores, fast food restaurants and recreation centres. \u00a0I’m not sure; at what point is a long run no longer a long run if you have to keep stopping? \u00a0To make it worse it was a cold and damp day. \u00a0Every time I started again I was chilled to the bone and it would take time to find the rhythm again. \u00a0I would just warm up, think I was feeling good and the cramps would hit again. \u00a0At 22k after yet another bathroom stop I made my way to a drug store and bought Immodium. \u00a0I actually made it through the last 9k without a stop. \u00a0But by that time it was dark and part of my route back to my car was on trails. \u00a0Other people were out walking, so I wasn’t feeling isolated, but there were sections where you couldn’t see the ground. \u00a0Needless to say my pace dwindled to almost walking and even when\u00a0I detoured to find some light I struggled and my pace stayed disappointingly slow. \u00a0I have never been so happy to make it back to my car, but I was also so discouraged. \u00a0I tried to remind myself that I didn’t give up, that I finished 31 of what was supposed to be a 32k run. \u00a0But it was still hard to ignore the feeling of failure on my final 20 miler. \u00a0The run left me completely drained… literally. (Sorry, that was my poor attempt at humour about “runs”. \u00a0And again, sorry).<\/p>\n

I had done the long run on Friday because I wanted to participate in our family Thanksgiving tradition – the Fall Colours Race put on by Somersault. \u00a0I figured if I could get the long run over with, I could take Saturday off and then enjoy the 5k race on Sunday. \u00a0I even planned to then go for an evening run to make up some of the missed mileage of the week. \u00a0You would think that after a full day off my system would get back to normal, but no. \u00a0I did finish the 5k but by 3k I was seriously considering DNF’ing and just getting to the porta potties. \u00a0Everything about the run felt awful and my time was a disappointing 26:22, a full minute slower than my 5k a month ago. \u00a0With it being a small race it was enough to win my age group but it wasn’t a win I felt proud of. \u00a0I struggled through most of the run, though it is worth noting that this is not a fast 5k course; lots of bends, elevation changes and gravel. \u00a0I felt like I worked way too hard and was way too uncomfortable to have that final time. \u00a0Later in the day I opted for a nap rather than another run.<\/p>\n

And so began the head games. “I peaked already.” \u00a0“I will never make it through 42.2km.” \u00a0“I thought I was stronger.” \u00a0“Why does everyone I know\u00a0run faster than me despite all of the work I put into running?”<\/em> \u00a0There are three weeks until my marathon. \u00a0It is clear to me that the real challenge of these weeks will be mental. \u00a0I need to get my confidence back and I need to think positively.<\/p>\n

Thankfully today I made it through a comfortable 11k with no bathroom stops (yay!). \u00a0I also realized that while dwelling on the negatives I hadn’t noticed what I had accomplished last week. \u00a0Because I ran my long run two days early, I actually ran 91 km between Sunday and Friday. \u00a0Six days, 91 km! \u00a0Most of those runs may have sucked, and of course involved far too many stops, but it was still 91k that I fought through during a really difficult week. \u00a0I am going to try to hold onto that fact in the hopes it reminds me that I can be strong, it just doesn’t always look the way I want it to.<\/p>\n

\"Porta<\/p>\n

Follow me on Twitter @AverageRunnerK<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warning: this post quite possibly contains Too Much Information… In my last post I talked about how life can get in the way of marathon training. \u00a0I was thrown a few curve balls as I headed into my biggest week of training and while I did my best to keep up, if you total my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-running"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3amQ2-u7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1873,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}