I feel bad that I haven't written in this blog in a while. It's hard to make the case that "I AM SRS BLOGGR" when I rarely ever write. But, fear not - I have been running, and that's what's most important!
I want to talk about two runs I did this weekend. On Friday after work I did a 20-minute run. The weather was great and as I was into the home stretch, I found myself thinking: something is different this time. This run, it's....it's.....not as hard as usual. In fact, right now, it's not hard at all. Normally by this point in my runs, my legs are tired, I'm running slow, and I'm just trying to get to the end. But I realized that at that moment, I wasn't tired, and I was actually running a little bit faster than normal. Well, hot damn, I thought, I'm making progress! I'm getting better! I can actually feel my runs getting a little bit easier! I'm finally seeing results!
My next run was my "long run" on Sunday morning (okay, to be fair, since I'm so new to running and can't run very far or fast yet, at this point in my training the "long run" isn't really that much longer than my 20 minute runs). I was riding high from that great run on Friday evening. Invigorated by how much easier that run had been than normal, I burst out onto the road on Sunday morning, expecting this run to be just as successful as the Friday night run.
But it wasn't, and I knew it within minutes of starting. Before I even made it out of the neighborhood my legs were tired. The uptick in pace that I felt on Friday evening was not going to be happening today - I was back to running really slow, and even then, I spent most of the run waiting for it to be over. There were times, around that dreaded midway point, where I honestly wondered how I'd get through the last half without stopping. It wasn't a terrible run, and no, I never stopped to walk - but it felt like I'd gone back in time to when I just started training, and all the progress I felt like I'd made was just some sort of illusion. What??
I understand that training is not a perfectly linear progress and that every once in a while, I will have bad days and setbacks. But sometimes I can't help but wonder: is this just a routine setback that happens to all runners, or am I just not going to get better? Maybe I am just not good at this.
And I also wonder, what could I be doing wrong in my training? There's advice everywhere for the best ways to do things, but it's starting to make me feel like I'm on information overload. What to eat, what to wear, when to run, where to run, when to focus on speed and distance, etc etc. There's no possible way I can know what works best for me until I try it out, but I don't want to find a schedule or technique that works well for me only to learn it was actually working against me in my training. Sometimes I'm just like, "arrrggg, I thought running was supposed to be simpler than other forms of exercise??"
When I think about it, there are explanations for why Friday's run was an unexpected success and why Sunday morning's fell flat. When I ran on Friday, it was in the evening, so I had eaten two meals already that day. On Sunday I hadn't eaten anything yet. Also, on Friday, I had that boost of energy from knowing my week was over and I had the whole weekend ahead of me.
I don't know exactly why some runs go well and some don't. But, at the end of the day, I guess all I can do is continue to navigate my training: enjoy those unexpected good runs, and don't get beaten up by the bad ones.
So don't know if you actually want more advice, but bad runs are completely normal! I always tell myself "You need to have bad runs so that you'll recognize and appreciate the good ones!" I wouldn't blame your training at all, and the fact that you are sometimes feeling better and making progress on distance or pace is a good sign. I wouldn't worry about comparing individual runs to each other.
ReplyDeleteWhen I trained for my first marathon, I, like you, did all this research and found all this information. And eventually something I read would completely conflict with something else I read and I experienced the same frustration and realized there was no one right way to train. I ultimately decided to just stay with one plan and one philosophy to try it out and not worry about every little thing I read. That's a good strategy for new runners--just stick with something, meet your first big goal (the half marathon in the spring), and then you'll learn a little bit more about yourself and what works and can make adjustments from there.