Sunday, February 9, 2014

Marathon training and failing (again)

Okay, so I kind of dropped off on blogging about running mostly because after the Haunted Hustle, I stopped running races.  I had signed up for the Turkey Trot and had plans to run the Berbee Derby, but I ended up not doing either.


Wisconsin is having a really really cold winter.  What has this done for my marathon training?  Well, it's pretty terrible.  When the days get shorter and the weather colder, finding the motivation to put on running shoes and run outside is pretty impossible.  But when the days start to get longer in the spring, training is a thrill.  My training has not been off to a very good start, though not necessarily a bad one either. 

Last spring, when training for a marathon in May, I had stopped running altogether that winter.  I was barely able to do 5 miles when I started up again at the end of January.  Two weeks later, I ran a 5k race that was cold and rough.  It was one of my slowest 5k.  By mid-March, however, I was able to pull out a half marathon PR.  But training sucked.  I vowed that the next marathon training schedule would go better.  Problem is, marathon training is time consuming and such a long process.  It's hard to train for a race that's 6 months away!  Not to mention, the long runs that take hours and hours.

This time, I didn't stop running this winter.  I just stopped running some races butt early in the morning.  And though the winter has been really cold in Wisconsin, I've been hitting the gym and logging some speedwork on the treadmill.  Couple that with a yoga practice, and I've been feeling like a much stronger runner.

I also escaped the Wisconsin cold and made this move across the country to California for a few months.  One might think that the 65 degree temperatures in sunny SoCal would be conducive to my running, but you'd be wrong.  Instead, I'm having a hard time finding the time to run.  I spend 1.5-2 hours commuting to and from work.  What could/should be my running time has become my commuting time.  Plus, it's amazing how love a running trail/path could motivate one's training.  There's no awesome Arboretum loop here, just local streets lined with houses and unleashed small yappy dogs that chase me.  No, I've not been happy with my runs here until this past Wednesday.

This past Wednesday, I sucked it up and decided to lap it around a park.  At .7 miles, if I wanted to do 15 miles, it meant nearly 22 laps.  I didn't know if I'd have the patience to do it, but I found that counting down the number of laps left was a lot easier than counting up.  So I did 15 miles in about 2.5 hours.  I felt really very good about that.  I didn't struggle as much as I had with 15 miles last spring and most of the run felt easy and comfortable.  My legs felt tired and sore the next day, and I'm nowhere near the weekly mileage that I really need to be at, but I'm feeling much more optimistic about this marathon I'm supposed to run in a month.  Shit, A MONTH!