Two days post race. The first part of this post will be of no interest to my non-running friends, I'm sure. Just skip ahead if you don't want to go through the data analysis.
In the past 2 days I have iced my knee and IT band. I have massaged, stretched, moaned, squealed, and rested, rested, rested. During that rest stage, I did data analysis. I know, nerd, right? I went through my running program and calculated my 10 minute averages, then tried to figure out where I was in the race and what was happening at the time. Then I clicked on this little arrow at the bottom of the app (after about a half hour of painstaking recording of 1 minute increments of a 2:37:00 race) and saw that it gave me mile averages. Wow. So much easier!!!
What the data shows me is that I did a great job during the part of the race that I was really trained for. My times were good through mile 9 (well, for me anyway). I remember feeling energetic. I had run 6 miles consistently, and the longer distances enough times that they were okay; tough, but I could do them without feeling miserable. My times slowed down drastically toward the end. I had only run 12 miles before on one occasion, and that with a bathroom break in the middle. (The plus side of running 2 loops past your own house is the bathroom/water break is really nice.) I thought about water and food - plenty of both. Hubby is convinced that I drank too much water. Is that even possible drinking from quarter-full Dixie cups? I ate my jelly beans. He also thinks I didn't need those. (My mom accidentally tagged him as my running coach. I think he took that title to heart.) My conclusion after looking at all the data? I just needed to run more long runs.
Groan.
At this stage in my running life, the long runs are not easy by any means. I wanted so much to be able to shortcut that, but the realization was that there is NO WAY to shortcut a long run. You just have to run longer. You have to hit that hard part and power through it one time, two times, three times, until the word long takes on a different meaning. (Remember when 6 miles was the "long" run?) Insert heavy sigh here.
I have said before how running is a metaphor for life. This is so true. How many times do we come up against something hard, something that will benefit us in the end, and we want to take a shortcut. We buy on credit instead of saving up. We blow off our college class and sleep in instead of attending the lecture and studying for the test. We let the dishes sit in the sink instead of just taking care of them in the first place. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. I'm a slow learner.
There is no room for slow learning in distance running. Slow learning brings pain, injury, defeat of the spirit. Nike, in their wisdom, chose the right slogan when they said, "Just do it!" There are no shortcuts. You can't skip to mile 9. You have to run up to it, and then keep going.
"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort."
--Jesse Owens
No comments:
Post a Comment