Well, sadly, there is no picture this week with me holding up 8 fingers and a gigantic grin for accomplishing 8 miles. However... I am excited to post that I did finish 7 miles while visiting my parents, and that means running (well mostly walking quickly really) in all kinds of terrain and up and down many, many hills!
It's really interesting to me to discover just how mentally challenging this training is vs. just physically challenging. At one point during the run, I felt that we had gone at least halfway, but when I looked at my GPS tracker it said a very sad 3.13. I was so disheartened! I had spent so much of my energy and was looking for a boost to get me through the rest of the run. I instantly had my mind made up that I was done. I was ready to quit. And honestly, if I hadn't been running with my sis-in-law, Danielle, I would have headed straight back to the house and stopped there. She is a trooper. She told me we could do it, and that if we started running more, we would finish quicker. So we tucked in and and headed up a big hill (if you live around the Buhl canyon, you know just how big these hills really are) to another road to hopefully get us some more miles.
So at this point, my mental state was moderate, and I was ready (and willing) to finish. Another 30 minutes later though, we decided to check the GPS unit again to see how far we were.
It read: 3.13!!
Somehow when I had checked it before, it stopped tracking. I'm not sure if I accidentally pushed a button or what, but it went kaput.
Instant depression.
We had NO IDEA how far we had gone, and NO IDEA how much further we needed to go. We were both wiped, and had at least another half mile back to the house. Unanimous decision: cut our losses, and head home.
Today (after letting myself get over the disappointment of not completing my run for the first time) I decided to use mapmyrun.com to see just how far we went. I was very surprised to find that we went 7 miles! Not nearly as bad as I was fearing (5 miles)!
So, this week I'm going to kick butt! I'm not skimping on my runs, and I'm hitting that 10 mile run this weekend with the energy of a 5 year old with ADD!!
Hey, whoa, you didn't mention that we had to run with the energy of a five year old with ADD... I can only run with the energy of a 26 year old with bad knees.. But either way.. We'll make 10 miles!
ReplyDelete