I was determined to get eight full hours of sleep last night because I had a long run planned this morning. Then, unbeknown to me, Rascal decided to eat aluminum foil yesterday. How do I know this? He got sick in the bed last night at 3 a.m. and the cause was easy to see. So I banished him to his doggy bed, stripped the bed of sheets and blankets, started the wash, cleaned the floor of the aftermath and went to sleep on the couch for four more hours. If anyone is considering having a child without first having a dog, let me encourage you to reconsider. I’m convinced I’ll be more prepared to be a mom because of incidences like this. Thanks Rascal.
I woke up around 7 and proceeded to break the glass carafe from the French Press.
New coffee maker to the rescue! We received this super nice coffee maker as a wedding gift from our friends Sandy and Matt, but hadn’t opened it yet because space is limited on the counter. I shifted some thing around and made room. I’m sorry Vitamix, but coffee is my life blood and as much as I love you, Brad will surely divorce me if I don’t have easy access to coffee every morning.
Now, that’s better. I didn’t feel like running first thing, so I had a full breakfast. Two apple spice muffins with apple butter and chunky PB, plus two clementines.
But not before slicing my foot open with glass I missed from the carafe. I felt the cut, removed the glass, but then later noticed I was leaving a little trail of blood behind me wherever I walked. That’s not what you want to see when you have a long run planned in a couple of hours. A bandaid fixed everything. The blood was worse than the cut itself. I’m more surprised that a shard of glass was able to penetrate the bottom of my feet. I’m working on a runners callous; I won’t even let the nail tech pumice my feet.
I can’t get enough of these muffins. I only have 342 apples left so maybe I’ll make another batch.
After breakfast, I did some work and then headed out for my run. I planned out a 13.1 course, a half marathon. Now, my training plan only has me running 10 this week, but after running 12 last weekend, I felt the need to challenge myself. I was supposed to do my long run on Saturday, but moved it back to Thursday because we have friends coming into town and we’re going to an Oktoberfest (mucho beer + mucho running = mucho dehydration) on Saturday. Also I need to be at work on Friday so today became my long run day.
I did not have a good run. The high today was 93 so by the time I headed it out, it was in the high 80’s and extremely humid. But, for the most part, my bad run was my fault.
Here’s what I did wrong, what I learned from it, and what I’m going to do about it:
- I didn’t sleep as much as I needed this week. I need to get a good night’s rest every night, not just the night before my run.
I’m going to do my best to get 7 1/2-8 hours of sleep next week. - I ate salad for dinner = not enough carbs. Pre-running fuel is important, but what you eat the day before is soooo important. I ate at lunch when I wasn’t hungry and then just wanted veggies for dinner. Combined with the fro-yo, I had plenty of calories, but they weren’t good quality calories.
I’m instituting a pizza/pasta rule for pre-long run dinners. - I didn’t hydrate properly. I drank hardly any water this morning and forgot to drink any before bed last night. So, I drained my water bottle early in the run, got super thirsty, and had to find a water fountain at a park. By that time I wasn’t feeling so great.
I’m going to start monitoring my water intake all week and make sure I’m drinking 64 oz. a day plus 16 extra oz. the day before a long run and 16 oz. right before a long run. - I ran 5 miles 12 hours before my long run. If I’m going to do a long run, I need to make sure I’m not running the evening before. Even if it is an easy run, it’s just too much in too small of a time span.
I’m going to be smarter when I plan my weekly runs and realize that just because I’m getting up there in miles, short runs can still affect me.
Although I pretty much screwed this run up royally by not taking care of myself like I should, I did do a few things right.
- I fueled properly during my run. I ate almost an entire bag of Sharkies (minus the few Brad and I sampled last week). Without them I would have never made it.
- I found time to do the run, even though I have a super busy weekend. I made my schedule work for me.
- I didn’t force myself to run before I was ready this morning. Even though it was cooler, I just had the sense that I needed some time to wake up, eat, and acclimate myself.
- I cut the run short…or at least I thought I did. At some point I realized that I needed to go home. I knew I had reached my limit. But after two little wrong turns factored in plus my direct route home, I found that I actually ran 13.2 miles when I put my altered route into Googlemaps. However, I did end up doing a 30% walk/60% run for the last two miles.
Next week, I’m going to drop back to 12 miles on my long run day, as my training plan says, and I’m going to make sure I’m following these strategies to take care of myself. Training for a marathon is no-joke. You can’t just take care of yourself 24 hours before and think you’re going to have a great run. This was a good lesson to learn early in my training.