Marathon Training - Week 8 - Pre-13.1 Miler

Marathon Training - Week 8 - Pre-13.1 Miler

The rumors of my demise have been marginally exaggerated. It's been a bumpy ride over the last few weeks but I think I'm on the upward angle again.

My last post had me coming off a great 9 mile weekend run and getting ready for a 10 miler that weekend. I didn't get a very good run that weekend because I had to take my dog into the vet because we thought he'd sprained his knee. Well that 'sprain' turned out to be a venomous bite of some sort and over the course of a very long next week of very expensive and gut wrenching nights and days of intensive care we ended up having to put him down. That experience is one of the worst I've had to go through, and being the decision maker that had to choose to end the life of one of my best friends is something that I'm still struggling with coming to terms with. But as a result of all that I didn't get any runs in for a week after my failed 10 mile run and then coming back from that week I didn't do very well during the next week's run. So I went from a great 9 mile run to a failed 10 mile run, a week off, a poor week of training, and then attempted to do 12 miles last weekend.

12 miles. That alone seemed like a huge milestone and it would have been my first 'double digit' run if I had finished it. But it wasn't to be. I got started and got 5 miles into my run without alot of issues. At the 5 mile mark I walked for a few minutes will I took my 'gu' and rehydrated. But for whatever reason, I never could get restarted. I'm not sure if it was mental, or physical, or what but I never got restarted and ended up walking the 5 miles BACK to my house. Not the effort I wanted to put forward.

BUT THERE IS HOPE!

So far, this week has been a great running week. I got a good run in Tuesday and finished a 6 mile run on Wednesday which I hadn't been able to do for a few weeks. Yesterday's run was good as well and I'm optimistic about my chances to finish my 13 mile planned run tomorrow. I think part of my issues are running my 'long' runs by myself so I looked up a local running group that is training for a marathon around the same time mine is and I'm going to meet up with them this weekend and see how that run goes. I'm hoping that running with other people might be what it takes to keep me going or restart me going during my run. I'm really hoping that I'm able to finish 13 miles or what is essentially a half marathon.

This is a big mental milestone. If I can get 13 miles under my belt I think that's going to give me the motivation and prove to me that I'm able to do this. If I'm not able to do this weekend or at the very least get close I'm going to start to feel that I'm falling behind. If the most I've ever been able to complete is 9 miles with about 10 weeks left I'm going to start to be concerned with my ability to finish the full marathon.

We'll see how tomorrow's run goes. It'll be interesting if nothing else.