After a couple of soggy morning runs last week, Saturday found me hydrating and generally mastering the art of rest after a great yoga master class with my teacher trainer, the lovely Chrissy Carter, and hanging out with some of my favorite yogis and yoginis the night before.
Thursday night, I had managed to strain or overwork at least one of the external rotators on my left hip, right at the attachment area (read: butt). So, on Saturday, I contently lounged in my pajamas well into the afternoon, intermittently sitting on a bag of frozen peas and making friends with vitamin I as I watched hours of U.S. Open tennis on TV. I had all but planned to postpone my long (for me) run until Sunday morning to give my butt time to heal when I realized that if I ran Sunday morning, I’d get caught up with the Nation’s Triathlon, which had morphed into a duathlon thanks to the weeks’ rains.
Damn.
Fine.
I laced up after Nadal beat Murray.
I laced up after Nadal beat Murray.
The run confirmed what I’ve already known: I’m a lot slower than I was three years ago. I’m working on being okay with this.
On the positive side, I have realistic expectations: the run took me as long as I had expected it would take me, which means that I was back on the sofa to watch the second women’s semi-final. I even had time to spare rehydrate. And, although I missed Cyndi Lauper gallantly streaming our flag was still there, I was particularly pleased at my ability to schedule the run in between matches.
On the other hand, in addition to improving endurance, I need to work on staying positive. It’s been a challenge to turn off ignore the chatter in my head that gets stirred up during and post run. I’m also looking for a mantra. It used to be “Power through the legs, strong in the core.” I haven’t tried it yet this year — mostly because I haven’t felt particularly strong during any run — but I may need to recycle it.
On tap for this week: After this Saturday’s run, which was 8-miles by the way, I decided to adjust yet again my training schedule. I don’t plan to run 10 miles prior to the Army 10-Miler. My strategy has turned to something along the lines of train up to 8 miles, maybe 9, and rely on race-day adrenaline to carry me the rest of the way. So this week it’ll be ~17 miles total, including an 8-mile run and a tempo run in there.
And I'm still looking for a mantra if you've got any suggestions...
