Although I went hiking a few times in Europe, my exercise regimen in general was less than admirable, particularly for someone training for a marathon. I started off great with some uphill intervals in France, but a combination of hilly terrain, thin air, trails crowded by Italians who looked at you funny if you went by at anything slightly above a leisurely stroll, and recurring headaches made me fall off the wagon pretty fast. I did lots of reading and lying around, and returned to New York thinking that I'd better swing back into action, pronto.
I landed late on Sunday night, and on Monday I was feeling drained and unmotivated. I went to the gym for about half an hour and did some half-hearted work on the erg before heading home. On Tuesday, I couldn't bring myself to do even that. The following two days were the same. I'd plan my day carefully, always envisioning a long-overdue run at the end of it, but by the time I got home from work my will to do anything more than lie around on the couch and swear at the cats was sapped.
I read a lot and finished the fourth season of Breaking Bad. I bought a keyboard, printed some sheet music, and started to practice it. I unpacked, did lots of laundry, and tidied the apartment. All the while, I waited for this unpleasant, exercise-linked malaise to shift. But it never did. When Ed called from exotic locales, I talked to him about it. Though he was sympathetic, he couldn't really relate; the guy's a machine. He couldn't honestly tell me that this had never happened to him, and his advice was to just push through it. Have a good dinner with lots of iron, get plenty of sleep tonight, then get up tomorrow morning and run for just a few miles, he suggested. Get your endorphins going. It sounded like a good idea, so I ate a hearty dinner and got to bed early after setting my alarm for 5:45 A.M. The next morning, I woke up with the buzzer and lay in bed for over an hour, waiting to get up.
Me: OK, seriously, let's go.
Body: (no response)
Me: This is really ridiculous. It's been, like, 20 minutes.
Body: (no response)
Me: Pretty soon it's going to be too late to go. You'll have missed your chance.
Body, not cowed by threats: (no response)
Sure enough, soon I had to get up and dress for work, which I did willingly. The problem was clearly not fatigue; I'd had no problem lying wide awake at that early hour, nor rising to do something, as long as it wasn't going for a run. That evening, I found I still couldn't bring myself to go.
I found the situation deeply distressing. I had no idea what was wrong with me, which was unsettling. Would I have to drop out of the marathon? More than that, I've always identified myself as a runner. If I wasn't Beth Who Loves To Run, who was I? What was I going to do with the rest of my life?
On Sunday, I got really firm with myself. I set out for what I hoped would be a 20-mile run at about 10:00 in the morning. By 11:00, I was home again, having run 7 miles. Seriously. SEVEN. It was hot and nothing seemed to feel right. All of my joints hurt, my stomach was unsettled, the sun was in my eyes... It just seemed intolerable. I couldn't believe I'd spent countless hours doing this kind of thing for fun. Determined to give it another go, I started earlier the next morning. I got closer to my goal, 12 this time, but still a far cry from the 20 I'd hoped to reach. I was feeling seriously disheartened. I found myself wondering what the point was. I was never going to be impressively fast, even if I did have the motivation to train hard. I was always going to be just a notch above average, toiling away for - what?
Ed came home, and to my great annoyance headed out for a run early in the morning, not even 12 hours after he'd returned. I lay around. We had dinner plans with friends, I had plans to fold laundry, I wanted to catch up on email, something always seemed to come up that left me unable to get out of the house and go. This pattern persisted all week. On Thursday night, we went out with two friends of ours and I confided my woes to Jenny. Jenny isn't a terribly fast runner, but she's done a fair number of marathons and has quite a bit of long distance training under her belt. She said that she knew exactly what I was talking about, and to give myself a break. She said that everyone goes through this, especially when they're putting in a lot of mileage. It would pass, she was sure of it. I told her about my plans to try to get in that 20 miles on Saturday morning (a distance, by the way, that I'd covered a month before with little trouble) and she wished me luck. "I know my body can do it," I groaned, "I'm just not sure whether I can bring myself to stay out there..."
On Saturday morning, Ed and I got up early. We planned to head out together, which really helped me get going. I felt achy and my stomach hurt a bit, but I determined not to think about any of those things. We ran to the park together. Three miles down. The plan was to do most of the loop together, then he'd head for home and I'd keep going. We did, and to my amazement and relief, I felt better with every step. When Ed split off from me, I completed the loop and started another one. I zig-zagged around the park, following whims. I added two laps around the reservoir - something I don't usually do - for variety. I listened to a great audiobook. The wind suddenly picked up and the clouds simply opened, soaking me in moments. It rained on, and I found myself laughing. (I learned later that this freak storm had brought a tornado to Queens. Whoops.) I finished my last loop and headed home, clocking the whole run at 20.75 miles.
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| Woohoo! |
On Sunday I felt slightly stiff, so I rested but followed my down time with an interval workout and a swim on Monday. I'm looking forward to a tempo run tomorrow, and another long run over the weekend. Amazingly, according to the training plan I've been following, I'm somehow not behind, even after that long period of soul-searching. I must have counted wrong and started it too early, because this week I'm working on the line-up scheduled for the week after the interval workout I did in France. Somehow it's as if all that time off never happened. I feel refreshed and positive about running all over again, and I can't wait for the marathon in November!
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