Punishment

I haven't written in a while because guess what...I haven't run in almost 2 weeks! I went to Denver for my PSO training for AmeriCorps Vista. There was a gym there and I was really excited because I thought I would be in there doing all of my runs plus some much needed strength training. I ignored the advice of Leah by not doing my Tuesday run in the morning before I flew out, thinking that I would do it that night in the gym. I didn't do it, nor did I excercise once in that gym. I saw that people did their workouts and I had my running clothes and shoes with me, but after sessions lasting from 8-5 with breakfast from 7-8 and dinner from 5:30-6:30, I was exhausted or just wanted to hang out with people instead of running. After I got home that Friday I was so tired and ended up skipping my long run on Saturday. It all pretty much went downhill from there and then it was Thanksgiving. I had really messed up here and knew I would pay for it on my next run.

This morning I met with Leah and some of the other Running Peeps to do our long runs (because our coach was going to have us do them Tuesday night and there is no way I would be up for 5 miles after being on the go for over 14 hours). Leah and I took off around 7:10am and kept at a really even pace which ended up being about 16:35/mi which is nice and slow. My feet were killing me around mile 2 and my muscles were yelling at me. I was super tight and needed to stop to stretch out my right foot (still no new running shoes). The good part is that around mile 3 I was feeling great and then mile 4 I was giddy. I was even saying to Leah that maybe we could do 6 miles like she wanted to, but we decided to keep to five. This was an excellent idea because when we had about half to a quarter left, I was tired. I felt great when we finished and we had breakfast at our meeting place and a much deserved chocolate milk (yay!). There were a few things that I realized that you can only come to when you've made a few mistakes: the first is that I should NEVER go that long without running. The weekly runs are there for a reason and I would have had a better run if I had kept up or even did one of them this week. Secondly, I love running. I was getting in a lazy mode where I almost didn't want to run anymore and was more interested in the status of saying that I am a runner. Now I could give a crap about that status and would trade it all for the high. Thirdly, I have picked up a bad habbit: when I feel good, I tend to speed up. I need to remember that my weekly runs are just that and not races. I just get caught up in the moment and the fun and need to refocus on keeping an even pace so I don't burn myself out. Well, I plan on doing my Monday run and getting back into the swing of things. Until next time, I'll be running.