Running Blues

I hate January and February. I don’t think that is the first time I started a post with that sentence. I think it is a yearly occurrence. It gets dark early, the weather is cold, work is crazy and I can’t escape like my friends and family who share pictures of their warm vacations on Facebook. So those four things lead to two months of depression. And this year, thanks to leap year, February is an extra day long. Ha!

As I mentioned in my January Recap post, I somehow managed to get 50 miles in January. I think the unusually warm weather helped. My pace the last week of January was really good. I was starting to feel like I was getting some of my “speed” back.

Well I came crashing back to reality this week. My legs felt like lead. I can’t seem to run fast at all. My pace last week was in the 12 minute range. It made be very happy and optimistic. This week I struggled to get under 14. Yes I said 14. I haven’t run this slow since I started running 30 months ago. You can understand my frustration. I have a bad run every now and then but this was three straight “bad” runs. Sunday’s long speed run was a disaster, Monday’s moderate run was marginally better and Thursday’s short run was the worst. Eric’s solution is “Just run faster.” Yes he is still alive and no he doesn’t have a black eye! It must be nice to just be able to run faster. Sometimes I hate him. Well not hate, just jealous. He doesn’t really train and can go out and run a half marathon like its nothing. Maybe I do hate him? Lol!

Eric has Grandma’s Marathon coming up in June and he needs to seriously start training soon. There is no way he can go run a marathon on very little training. Yes, I know his brother Chris did it in 2001. For his long runs, he wants me to bike alongside him so I can provide him water and whatever else he needs. I’m not against doing that but I don’t want to miss out on my long runs for my Grandma’s half marathon. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of biking in April and May.

Last night we watched a documentary called Spirit of the Marathon. “It follows six runners from vastly different backgrounds as they train for the Chicago Marathon. It also went into the history of marathons and the appeal of such an arduous challenge.” It made me very eager to get out and run again. 

The weather is sort of cold today and it is windy. Normally I’d run outside, but we got a foot of snow on Tuesday and the icy paths are still somewhat snow covered. I’m not ready to fall and break a leg or arm. So today I’m taking my long run inside (at the high school track). I’m hoping that it will be better than all the bad runs I had this week!