Reevaluating

Horrible, no good run today. While there was an Air Quality Alert today (and now my mouth tastes like exhaust), that's not the real reason the run was bad. It was bad because my training is not going the way it's supposed to.

My buddy Bart Yasso says if you do 90% of your training runs, you should be good for your race. I think have skipped one run every week since marathon training began. When you are only running 3 times a week, that's a lot. So I've only been doing 66%, roughly? Eeps.

My run today was supposed to be 14 miles. Well, actually, I should have run that on Wednesday, and today was supposed to be 7 miles of speedwork. I chose not to run on Wednesday. Today I ran 4 miles. I started walking after 2.

I am really considering doing the half marathon in October, and then doing a full marathon in either April or May. There's the Martian Marathon in April, and the Flying Pig Marathon in May. Either would be good choices - I'll have to do some research on them.

Last year, when I ran the half marathon, I had such a hard time running in the summer, and therefore, my race time was slower than I'd hoped and I felt awful physically during the race. I remember skipping a lot of runs last summer because of the heat. Guess what? Training schedules have runs on them for a reason. They don't expect you to skip every other one and still accomplish your goal.

My nutrition hasn't been the best either. I keep reading over and over how important nutrition is for runners. If I go to the half, and then do the full in the Spring, I need to commit to eating the right foods, and really nourishing myself.

In a lot of ways, I'm really excited about the possibility of going down to the half. I'd love to take last year's time and blast it out of the water. I'd love to run the whole thing, and do well. I'd feel like I conquered the half marathon, and ran a good race. Last year was not a good race. If I do the full, the way I've been training, I think it would not be a good race either.

I came home from my run and cried to my husband about how horrible my training has been. At first he tried to encourage me to keep going and that I could run the marathon this October, but when you look at it all, it might not even be wise. Poor nutrition + poor training = poor racing.

If I do the half, my hubby is going to help me shed a few pounds this fall/winter and get stronger. He says this is at least 25% his fault, because there have been times where he's encouraged me to sleep in instead of run, or he's made me unhealthy food, or encouraged junk food eating. I don't think his percentage is accurate, but it is encouraging that he wants to help! If I do the full in the Spring instead, I'm glad we know what I need to change, and I'm glad he knows how he can help. That is encouraging.

I have until October 1 to change my race. I might go try and do the 14 miles tomorrow morning - we'll see. Depending on how I feel after that, I'll likely make my decision.

Distance: 4.0
Time: 47:23
Pace: 11:50