5 a.m. is DARK

Went for my first 10 mile long run!  Got up on Wednesday at 5 a.m. and headed out.  After my last long run experience where I wanted water so much I was relating my thirst to vampires, I decided to wear Greg’s fuel belt that has spots for water.  IT WAS AMAZING.  I didn’t even feel self conscious when I saw other runners out there on the road who looked more fashionable, because I’m figuring they just felt thirsty and jealous.

The weather was fantastic, I actually felt a brief chill when I left the house, which was such a relief after all this summer running in the heat.

My two previous long runs had both been 9 miles each, and had included a frustrating number of walking breaks.  My goal this time was to run slower rather than pushing my pace, and reduce my breaks.

It was SO much better.  The weather was a big help, but it was also amazing just to slow down, not pay attention to my watch, and just run a comfortable pace that I felt like I could maintain indefinitely.  “Settle in, settle in!” as my father-in-law likes to say.  He has two sons, one a marathon runner (my husband) and the other a professional triathlete, and he’s a former runner, so he really knows his stuff.  He used to shout encouragements like that to his sons during their races, and it’s fun now that his advice is starting to make sense to me in my own running 🙂

I knew mentally that my long run was supposed to be like this, a pace that I could maintain, that was slower than my shorter runs.  That’s easier said than done, though, when you realize how far you have to go and how much longer it’ll take you if you don’t pick up the speed.  I want to get home and have breakfast, darn it!

On my previous long runs I was pushing too hard, and taking walking breaks every half mile or mile to recover.  That’s A LOT of walking breaks when you’re running for 9 miles, and it made me feel like a failure.

I found that my average pace actually improved when I ran slower and took fewer walking breaks.  I went from an 11:30 average pace with breaks to an 11:09 average pace with breaks, and this was including adding a mile to make it a 10 mile run.  I stopped to drink water from the fuel belt, to take a gu, and at one point when I thought there was something in my shoe.  Other than that I just kept on going, and it felt like a much greater accomplishment than when I was running a faster pace and then giving up, over and over again.

My 9 mile run a 2 weeks ago

My ten mile run on Weds

There’s a lot of running books out there that have nifty charts for taking your 5k pace and using that to determine your half marathon or marathon pace.  It’s important to remember that the longer you’re running, the slower your pace is so that the challenge can be the distance.  I was forgetting that, and trying to run faster than I could maintain and getting really frustrated on my runs.  It’s an accomplishment to run 10 miles on a single run, that’s enough success without trying to do it FAST, also.  That’s a great way to get discouraged or get injured when you’re a beginner like I am and doing that distance for the first time.

Why are there such obvious running lessons out there that I still seem to have to learn by making the mistake on my own rather than just paying attention and doing it right the first time?! If you read ANYTHING about long runs online, it’ll tell you to run significantly slower than your 5k pace!  My husband knows this.  The internet knows this.  My body knows this.  Only took me like six long runs to figure it out.

The great news, though, is that I’m figuring this out during my training so I won’t end up pushing too hard on race day and walking half of it and feeling like a failure.  I’d rather run the whole thing at an 11:10 pace than run 70% of it at 9:40s and walk the rest.  My mistake was in thinking that I could run the whole thing at the pace I maintain for shorter runs, just adding on a mile at a time at the same pace.  Nope.  That’s not how it works.

Hey, now I know.

The best part of the whole run was when I stopped looking at the watch, started just running a comfortable pace, and looked down at mile 7 to see that I was doing a 10:19 pace, which I maintained for almost three miles towards the end of the run.  That felt great, and made up for some walking water breaks and a slow warm up mile in the beginning.

I finally made it out for another run with my local mother’s forum running club!  Every time I go, I push harder than I normally would because they’re all faster runners than I am.  Their casual, conversational pace is faster than my race pace, but they’re there to be social as well as run so they’re nice enough to slow down and I work hard to speed up!  It’s awesome, because they’re really nice about running with me but also letting me drop back if I need a break.  (I’d feel so bad if they stopped with me that I probably wouldn’t show up.)  We do an out and back run so if I make it the first mile, I can slow down and then try to do the last mile with them.

It’s really fun to have a chance to run with some other moms, and this group is so positive, fun and supportive!

It was a really hot morning, and we did the first mile at faster than my 5k race pace.  I felt really proud, but then I totally crashed after a hill and had to walk/run back.  I tried to catch them at one point on the return, only to realize that I could see pretty far ahead of me and just because they were in sight did NOT mean I could catch up to them!

They were so nice that they waited for me at our start point to say goodbye and see if I was all right before they headed home.  I’m doing a nice slow jog when I realize this and think “Drat, now I have to keep running, AHHH!!! Why are they waiting for me?!”  So they helped me push myself even when they weren’t running with me!

I can’t wait until I can run the three miles the whole way with the group without having to stop and wait and catch them on the turn around.  They’ll still be running slower so I can keep up with them, but it’d be nice to maintain that 9:30 or 9:40 pace and get to listen to them chat.  I do not chat.  My contribution to the running club is that for extra running motivation they get to pretend Darth Vader is chasing them.

Would I have run outside today if I weren’t meeting up with the running club?  No.

Would I have run a 9:37 minute mile without stopping?  No.

Would I have averaged a 10:33 pace for 3 miles including my walking breaks despite the 74% humidity that made it feel like 88 degrees out?  DEFINITELY NOT.

Am I excited to push harder on my short runs so that I can do a better job keeping up with the other moms?  Yes!

Win, win, win.

I’m afraid.

I signed up for a destination half marathon in September, bought plane tickets for my husband and I, booked the last room of a bed and breakfast, and lined up my parents to babysit so we could have our first weekend away from the kids since before Andrew was born.  The half marathon is the morning before my 30th birthday, and we’ve got reservations for an amazing birthday dinner in wine country that night.

Sounds amazing, right?

Well, maybe.  Where I am with my running right now, it could go either way.  I’ve been lagging on my long runs, excusing myself because of the weather, and not paying enough attention to all the running advice out there and doing hills and intervals to make myself a stronger runner.

I don’t want to spend that birthday dinner, the last night of my twenties, whining about how I ended up walking mile 6, 10 and 12 and took almost three hours to finish because I couldn’t get my butt in gear TODAY and for the next eight weeks.  I want to sit there feeling smug and accomplished and awesome because I just ran a half marathon, something I never in my life thought I’d be able to do.  

Where things are right now, there’s a chance I’ll be walking as much as running that half marathon if I don’t kick myself into gear.  And I want to kick it into gear.  I want, more than anything, to work hard enough in these next eight weeks before the marathon so that when I cross that finish line it’ll be a celebration of all the times I pushed hard when I felt like stopping, stayed fast when I wanted to catch my breath, and got up early to run when I wanted to stay in bed.

The harder I work during these next eight weeks, the greater that triumph will be when I cross the finish line knowing I prepared for it and I ran my best race.

I’ll never get another first half marathon.  I may not even get another half marathon, because frankly, running for more than six miles is actually kind of boring.  Turns out I may be the kind of runner who wants to get out there for half an hour to an hour, then hit the shower feeling satisfied that I worked hard enough for one day.

I’m grateful that I am thinking about that finish line now, and realizing that if I don’t shape up, I’ll be wishing I could transport myself back to this moment and time and start over.  I’m here, now, and it’s not too late to do better.  I’m adding another run in to up my weekly miles so I’m running four days a week, I’m going to try to do at least ten minutes of strength training three days a week, and no more lying to my Garmin about my walking breaks on those long runs.  Every run is a race now, every time I lace up is a time to run as hard as I can for those miles.

I am going to buckle down, starting now.  I am running this.