[warning: no pictures. good luck]
After my incompletion of the Pittsburgh marathon, I have had my sights set on another marathon. Hopefully with my dad. Hopefully one I'm able to complete. And hopefully one in which I qualify for the Boston Marathon (NY too! did you know it's harder for me to qualify for the NY marathon than Boston? isn't that weird?).
Getting back into the swing of hard, rewarding running was a difficult for me. Why should I be pushing my body to do something that it clearly told me it was not happy with me doing? (of course, the supplement I started taking was going to help with this...) And I've always viewed running as half physical/half mental, so rewarding runs where I pushed myself seemed hard to come by. My first runs were easy, not fast, but I was sustaining 40 minute runs without passing out, or getting a similar feeling. I could feel myself getting stronger and building back to where I was around the this time last year. I was fortunate enough to be doing this running at camp, which I've always thought leads to magically awesome runs (see? mental.).
Enter yesterday's daily 5 mile run. It was faster, I could feel that. But sometimes when I think I'm running fast, i'm not actually...or I end up slowing a lot towards the end...BUT, to my surprise, I calculated my pace to be one that would qualify me for both marathons! And then some! I was ecstatic when I realized this but MAN! it hurt! How does anyone sustain that pace for 26.2 miles!? Hell, it's still inconceivable to me that elite runners can run a marathon at a pace faster than I can even run one mile.
Regardless, I feel like this was the breakthrough I've needed. All the pills I've taken, the extra strengthening exercises I've done, the mental focus I've tried to employ on every run, got me to here. I know my next couple runs will not measure up to the mental and physical success of that run, but it's all about baby steps. I know that I can, and right now that's going to help me more than anything.
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