Marathon Training

This morning's run was harder than last week's.  I blame the sun.  Last week, the sun woke me early and I went out early in the sunshine and it was lovely.  This week, the alarm woke me to a grey and dismal sky, and I simply could not get myself moving.  The Husband was up and in his running gear while I was still in my muttering/shambling morning zombie phase.  He had to wait a while for me to get some breakfast, get stretched and lace up my shoes.  Bright sunshine makes such a huge difference; without it, my sheer force of will is barely enough to convince my body to move at all let alone keep moving for fourteen miles.

In any case, I finally dragged my sorry self out of bed and out of the house, and I ran 2 miles with The Husband, which was hard for him, because I have short little legs and he really wanted to go faster.  But he politely paced me for two miles, then he went home and I ran another 12 miles.  For funzies.

This morning's run was not full of butterflies and bunny rabbits.  It was just kind of drab.  For an hour or so I regretted not doing my run yesterday with a group.  Yesterday it was sunny and I would have had some social interaction, and that seemed preferable to the slog I was on.  But gradually I hit my stride and my mind quieted and I appreciated the overcast sky as I got to mile ten and wasn't overheated or thirsty or sweating or sunburned.  I got lots of good thinking in, and also about an hour of total mental silence, which was lovely.

I did skip a short run this week, so I might have been affected a bit by that, but the running itself felt fine.  I felt like I had found my "forever" pace, a rhythm where your body feels like it could really keep on doing this forever.  That lasted until Mile Thirteen, when I could feel my hips starting to creak and my knees complain and each downslope was more of a barely-controlled plummet than a descent.  Still, I ran it.  Yay!

This week's training will have to be compressed a bit, because I am going to Colorado on friday to visit my seester, and I don't want to take time out of my visit to do a long run, and nor do I want to do my long run at Altitude.  I am such a flatlander now that 15 miles at 6000 feet would be a really really bad idea.  Really bad. So I am going to try to get my long run in on Friday morning before work and then maybe do a short run while I'm in Colorado.