Day 29: The slough of despond
Q: Is it wise to run 3.5 miles the day after running 5.6 miles (the most you’ve ever run in your life) with no rest in between?
A: In brief, no.
Not in brief: I asked this question myself, yesterday, when plotting out my schedule for the week. Of course I have a regular schedule, but with the switcheroo between Saturday/Sunday runs, I was reevaluating. Peattie suggested that running 3.5 today would be fine, and I agreed. Before starting my run today, I was even optimistic. I was very sure that I’d be back to running my nice 5.7mph pace, and was confident in my rationalizing that 3.5miles is really so short compared to 5.6, what was I even worrying about? Yeah. Ugh. No. I wasn’t five minutes in before I wanted to turn around and walk, slowly, back. At 10 minutes, I actually stopped for about three minutes, almost cried, seriously contemplated turning around, and then finally started running again, my bum left leg hating me the whole time. I talked myself back into confidence again for the middle part of the run, and even picked up the pace during the nicest part of the trail, alongside the Mountain View Slough (yes! a slough! like in Laura Ingalls Wilder! I still barely know what a slough is, but this is one of the best parts of this stupid activity).
But then my feet started getting numb (I swear, the bitchy salesgirl at See Jane Run totally sold me bad shoes) and after stopping for a quick sip of water from a drinking fountain, I couldn’t quite bring myself to start running again immediately, so I walked for a few seconds. I started again, passed the site of my previous near-breakdown, and a few minutes later I had another semi-breakdown — only it didn’t feel semi at the time. I wasn’t even tired. I just couldn’t handle the combination of pain in different parts of my legs, the leaden feeling in them wherever they didn’t hurt and the numb soles of my feet. I forced myself to finish, and after stretching and showering, and dosing myself with ibuprofen, I feel more upbeat but still really fucking frustrated.
Part of the reason I’m upset is just that I don’t really know where I stand here. Is this to be expected? Will it go away if I keep plugging on? Is there something I can do to prevent this/fix it? Should I continue to run as planned, only really slowly? (Set aside the fact that my goal in terms of speed at the outset of this was a 10-minute mile — yeah, 10 minutes, that’s right — and now I’m considering myself lucky to hit 11:30 minutes.) Should I scale back? Should I be concerned that I can’t do this?
To be fair, the long run on Sunday was totally doable — even if I was slow. It’s these runs I do after I’ve pushed myself that seem to be painful. I just need to learn my limits, maybe. The other thing I wonder, and full disclosure here, is if I managed to lose weight (an enterprise I’ve failed at utterly for the past three years) if my running would get easier. I mean, I know that’s true, but I don’t know how it’s possible given that I also need to feed my body in order to run. And thinking about this only makes me more dejected, so I try not to focus on it, but it’s hard not to when you are plodding around feeling like you want to curl up into a little ball on the Shoreline golf course.
Anyway. All I know is, at least tomorrow and Wednesday are easier days — Burn and cross-training, and I’m going to do true cross-training this time instead of evil, evil intervals — and hopefully when I run on Thursday I won’t totally want to throw myself into the slough.
Summary:
- 3.74 miles (route)
- 45:32 minutes (this includes the three or so minutes I stood watching people practice putting and thought about turning around)
- 5.28mph if you subtract the time I spent wussing out; 4.93mph if you include it. Either way, pretty poor.
P.S. I published my training plan so now anyone on the web can look at it, if they are curious. It’s color-coded!
P.P.S. Full credit on the title, a riff on Pilgrim’s Progress, goes to Louisa May Alcott, without whom I would never have heard of Pilgrim’s Progress. That’s right, LMA and LIW in one post. I may suck at running, but my references to children’s book authors are at an Olympic level. Um, sure.
