This was a hard week for me. First, Bryan was in British Columbia all week for a guy's ski vacation so I was home all alone. Second, the weather was bitterly cold which forced a couple of my mid-week runs inside on the treadmill which I hate. You are probably thinking...."this is nothing -- stop complaining and just run!!" I agree......until the worst happened. I woke up around midnight on Thursday night to a nasty stomach bug. I will spare you the details, but it really knocked me on my butt for a couple days. On Friday I had no appetite and probably only ate about 500 calories -- no where near enough necessary to get me through a long run with my team on Saturday. I may be a stubborn runner, but I am smart enough to know that I should not be running 16 miles....I couldn't even walk from my couch to the kitchen without getting tired!!
So I skipped the Saturday morning run and took it easy for another day. My appetite started coming back, but not my usual eat everything in sight self. I managed to eat a few more calories on Saturday, though still not enough. Sunday morning rolled around and I felt good so I decided to head out for a run......by myself. I decided to do two 9 mile loops so that I could swing by my car to re-fill my water bottles and Gu.
The first loop felt okay....I took it easy knowing that I wasn't fully recovered. I stopped at my car after finishing 9.25 miles and seriously contemplated quitting at that point. Who would blame me or think less of me?? 48 hours ago I couldn't keep anything in my stomach, my feet were wet from all the puddles I was running in -- stopping after 9 miles would have been totally acceptable to everyone....except to me. So I started back out on my second loop quickly before I could talk myself out of it.
Let's just say this run was absolute hell! But awesome at the same time!?!?! I hated having to run that far by myself.....3 hours is a lot of time to be in your head with nothing but your thoughts. I played mind games to pass the time -- for about 5 miles there was a man running 15 feet in front of me with a 2005 Boston Marathon jacket. For those 5 miles, I focused solely on that jacket knowing that I was doing this crazy run to earn the right to wear the sacred Boston jacket. Thank you running man for helping me motivate and get through this run!
As miserable as it was, I needed this run. It made me stronger -- both physically and mentally. I needed to know that I could force my legs to continue putting one foot in front of the other even when every ounce of my body was screaming at me to stop! I finished this run in a great deal of pain, but so proud of myself for pushing on and running 18.5 miles all by myself! I'm just happy that I don't have to do all my long runs by myself and that I have awesome teammates to run with most of the time!!
This is what this crazy marathon journy is all about -- finding how hard I can push both my body and my mind!
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