“Lap Three! Keep Running!!”
shouted out one of my neighbors (who I don’t know) from the front porch of his
home this past Friday night as I passed by, charging slightly uphill at an
uncomfortable pace. Even though I
chuckled at the guy’s remarks, truth be told, I needed a little encouragement
because I felt like I was dying.
There’s a large part of me that would be happy running slow, easy miles
all the time and not trying to kill myself on a Friday night when I should be
home sitting on my front porch drinking a beer like my neighbor probably
was. But I know if I want to race
fast, I’ve got to have some fast (uncomfortable) running in training.
Thus far, I probably would sum up my training for the Boston Marathon as
“mostly crap.” I started preparing
for the race way later than I had intended because of my sprained ankle, and
then when I was finally able to return to running, I felt like I was forced to
focus more on recovery rather than progressing into a faster runner.
However, this past week of training was probably the first week that I
feel like I had some real substance.
Wednesday night I was doing 3-minute repeats of running uphill at around
a 5:40 pace, Friday night I was running 15 minutes at marathon pace with a two
minute active recovery followed by 15 minutes at half marathon pace, and then
Sunday during my long run, I threw in 10 x 90 seconds at what was supposed to
be 6:25 minutes-per-mile pace but instead I ran them too quickly (so, I
probably got in some half marathon-specific training rather than
marathon-specific).
Even my Saturday night yoga class was brought to a new level of
intensity this past week. When I
arrived at class after running five easy, slow miles, I expected to join the
normal, smallish group of yogis to get in some stretching to complete my “rest
day.” Instead, there were people
everywhere and not a free cubbie in sight to store my belongings during the hot
vinyasa class. I felt like I was
in the twilight zone. What was
going on? And then I saw her – the
five-foot, little devil of a machine, our substitute (and evidently popular)
yoga instructor. I think this
chick inhaled too many incents because she was off her ass – literally. Legs spread out front in a V-shaped
position, the Machine floated with one hand in front of her body and one
behind.
“This is not a spectator sport, people. Try it.” Was
she serious?? I can’t do that. “Yes, I’m serious.” Oh my god. The Machine can read my mind.
Needless to say, I went in to my Sunday morning long run already sore
(and came out even more so).
After pushing myself a little harder this past week, my body is feeling
a bit banged up. Nothing serious
(thank goodness!) but my muscles are certainly aching. While my mother thinks my diet could
use some more Thin Mints (“Paula – You’re too skinny. You need to eat more Girl Scout Cookies”), I chose to ignore
that little nugget of motherly advice and instead cooked up a pot of
chicken-quinoa soup (recipe from The Runner’s World Cookbook) Sunday night to
help aid with recovery and build my muscles back stronger.
Taking the easy route is almost always more appealing. I believe we as human beings
instinctually chose to avoid any unnecessary exertion. Why else would we drive around a
parking lot for 10 minutes so that we can save ourselves 10 additional seconds
of walking? And I know that when I
am out running, pushing the pace, my instinct is to back off and take it
easy. I have to tell myself all
the time – “No, you are not dying.
Stay calm and move on through this.” And I usually am right – I am fine, and I can hold the pace
if I don’t start freaking out about the effort.
Easy is just that…it’s easy. And it’s safe.
But to get stronger and better at something, you have to push outside
your comfort zone. To race fast,
you have to train fast. And if you
are feeling a little beat up (like me), just make yourself some chicken-quinoa
soup for the body.
Boston Experiment Week
6 of 16: 57
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