Good morning! Myles and I are sitting here on a rainy morning, drinking some coffee, and blogging together. It's become our morning ritual for him to sit in my lap while I read the Internet news and check all of my social media accounts. This is one of my favorite parts of the day.
I've had the good fortune over the past few months to write about my running in nearly all positive ways. For a couple months, my posts have been about that great "10 mile run" or that "great tempo run workout" that I ran. However, it does not always go swimmingly for me when I run and I think it's important to write on days when I just did not have "it" on my run. Today was one of those days. This morning I was scheduled to complete a Red Mile workout (12 one mile repeats with one minute rest in between each one). When I went to bed last night I could not mentally prepare and surprisingly this morning I woke up at the right time despite not setting my alarm--that should have been a signal I paid attention to. I trudged out of bed at 5:07a and got ready for my run. I ran to the Red Mile Course and kept trying to talk myself into the workout. I really was not mentally committing to the workout so I made a deal with myself that I'd just run 10 repeats this morning. After about 1.25 miles of warming up I took off for the first repeat. When I looked at my watch at the end of my first repeat I was three seconds off my goal pace and I was gassed. "Coach Josh," the "Josh" that motivates me, was hot. He muttered a few foul words and yelled at "Runner Josh." Then...I took off for the second one and hit the pace. I was pleased but not convinced I wanted to finish the workout. I ran the third repeat and was four seconds off pace. At this point Coach Josh exploded---"Josh, YOU have to CONCENTRATE. YOU'RE just NOT concentrating. (Bleeping) CONCENTRATE!" I took off for the fourth mile and "Runner Josh" just did not respond. I ran the fourth mile repeat at my daily pace. After the fourth mile "Runner Josh" was frustrated and "Coach Josh" was furious and we agreed that I'd just run about 5 easy miles to get to 10 miles for the day and call the workout. It's true, I did not finish the Red Mile workout today.
On the five miles to get home I processed a lot in my head about why things went so wrong this morning. At first, I was very upset and thought, "I'm going to have a bad day, I've got nothing to be proud of today, and I'm going to stink it up at the marathon." To those of you who have not seen this side of me it may come as a surprise, but I think it's important to be honest about the fact that I can start to have that negative discourse in my head from time to time. As I was processing, though, I was able to get "Coach Josh" and "Runner Josh" to realize that I today I was tired, I have run 80 miles in 8 days, and I was completely gassed mentally and physically. Usually if I don't have it physically my mind can push me to reach my goal (last week). And...usually if I don't have it mentally then my body can still perform and get my mind back on track. Today, though, I had neither the mental or physical strength to run the workout the way I wanted to run it. And so...I made the decision to call it off rather than continue to have "Coach Josh" made and upset and "Runner Josh" frustrated and maybe push it too hard and get injured. It was a real battle out there today and I'm very thankful this does not happen often. Now...imagine if you could have seen this. I'm sure it must have been funny to watch a guy talking to himself: One second yelling and the other second bargaining. I'm sure I would've looked out of my mind. Ha Ha Ha.
All in all, there is a silver lining in what happened today--which is that rather than continuing to bang my head against the wall (trying to run a workout when it was clear I was not mentally or physically into it) I decided to alter the plan. I think that this is a good life lesson that we probably all learn at some point. Sometimes we have to alter our plans in order to reach our long term goals. Sure...I was disappointed, but I would have been more angry and upset if I had continued that workout. And...in making a decision to alter the plan I was able to get rid of all that negative self talk that was going on in my brain. Self talk that is honest is good for us all, but self talk that starts to berate and hit our self-esteem has to quickly be roped in. I was glad to be able to do that on the five miles home.
Have a great Thursday and thanks for reading my blog. Happy running to you!
2 comments:
I was beating myself up on Sunday. The only person I was racing was myself and I felt like a failure. I wasn't acknowledging that in my training schedule, I was doing this race a month before the "one" I was training for, that I jumped into the training a month late after being down recovering from surgery. Sadly, it took me a few days to except this. I would have done better on Sunday, if I hadn't started beating myself up at mile 8. It's nice to know that its a family trait. I'm glad that you figured it out sooner than I did this week. You ROCK!!!
Thanks Tracy! It's easy to lose perspective during a run. Happens to me from time to time. :-)
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