Enough

1

September 11, 2013 by Amy B

Some mornings you just don’t have it.

I’m okay with this. Really. I am. But I did feel like I took the easy way out this morning. Just a little.

Woke up 10 minutes late. Had to spend 15 minutes getting the baby back to sleep after he woke up BEFORE 5AM. (so wrong)

Tried walking out the door and was requested to let the dogs out to pee. Another few minutes.

It was 5:17am when I finally hit the pavement. The weather was slightly sticky, but cool. I’d put on long sleeves, hoping to be comfortable.

A mile in, I realized not only was I totally overdressed, but I’d left my handheld bottle on the porch when I’d let the dogs out. Dammit.

Then the fog started to roll in. Actually, does fog “roll in” when you don’t live directly on a body of water? Let’s just say all of a sudden it was so dense I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of my face, and the headlamp was making it worse. AND I’d decided to run the highway out and back, which is hardly the place I like to be on mornings with dense fog.

Not from this morning (actually 2005) and the fog was MUCH WORSE THAN THIS but this post felt like it needed a photo of something other than me feeling defeated.

I spent the next few miles grumbling and wondering if my knee was starting to hurt and why the fuck did I wear these trails shoes (oh yeah, I was GOING to run the gravel loop but didn’t want to in pitch blackness and where the HELL are the street lights on this stretch near the state police post?

I reasoned that I needed to head back at the two mile point, because there was no way I’d make it out the door on time if I ran an extra mile (cop out).

It didn’t really end up mattering. Everyone slept in until 6:30, which is much too late for us to all be out the door on time. And it didn’t happen; I was ten minutes late. And then I forgot my phone and had to circle back to the house.

Damn, I was full of ALL TEH WINNING this morning.

While I am aware that I can still put that “hey, you got out there for four miles and that’s nothing to scoff at” feather in my sweaty Superfly Cap, I know I bailed. Physically, my legs did feel pretty heavy; I’m guessing it’s because I’m just getting tired at the end of this very long training schedule. But yesterday’s run? Five instead of eight. And yes, I said I didn’t care if I missed the mid-week long runs anymore because of scheduling pains in asses, but it’s hard for me to know something is in writing (in seeming concrete marathon training schedule stone!) and not doing it. And while in years past I haven’t always been so great at following the schedule (marathons on little or no training, hello), I’m older, (hopefully) wiser, and realize that shit isn’t very fun (or smart), no matter what the medal and finisher shirt look like.

Tonight is a family dinner so I probably won’t go out for a second run (yes, I considered it), but I may try to put in an eight miler tomorrow night on what would normally be a day off. I won’t be able to do that on Friday morning, so Thursday night seems like the next best thing. And since I took it relatively easy this morning (harrumph), that plus almost a day of recovery seems like it should be enough.

I wonder if I’m training “right.” I’m not putting in super high mileage weeks like a lot of the other runners out there. I haven’t really done “speed work” (or enough to merit me saying, “Yes, I do speed work!”), and my first attempt at a 20 mile run a few weeks ago was en epic disaster. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been able to successfully complete the big 2-0, the only one I consider being decent was the first year I ran Chicago, which was almost ten years ago.

I’m closer to 40 than 30, and I feel it. Maybe not to the extent that some of my peers do, but I’m aware that I’m no longer that 18 year old high school athlete or even that 29 year old getting ready to run her first marathon, full of the awesomeness that comes along with embarking on something unknown and exciting. In some ways, I’m in a lot better shape than I was back then (at least “running” shape), but it doesn’t seem like enough.

And maybe that is what I fear in the end. Will it be enough?