Good Times, Bad Times – You Know I’ve Had My Share

During the course of marathon training, I have obviously had good days and bad days – This is to be expected.  However, as much as I try to think rationally and keep my emotions at bay, I can’t help but feel low when I have a crappy run and elated when I kill it.

Even though I know my body will not feel great every day, I still start to doubt my abilities when a run turns out to be harder than I expected or if I can’t complete the miles at the pace I planned.  And it’s sometimes difficult to not let it all snowball…On my worse days, I start to doubt what I am even doing spending all this time running.  How far do I think I’m going to take this?  How good do I really think I’m going to get?

I also tend to have a love/hate relationship with my Garmin watch – I can’t imagine running without it, but I know it does not always tell the truth.  When it tells me I’m running faster than I had thought, I do a little victory dance in my head.  But on the dark side, when the number staring back at me is slower than I wanted, it kills my spirit.  I will let my Garmin watch dictate how I feel about my entire run.  And when the sky is cloudy or the trails are shaded and my lying watch tells me I’m running too slowly, I will run myself to death trying to beat my watch.

I wish I could say my manic episodes are confined to the trails and city sidewalks, but I know that I am guilty of letting a bad day or a bad week while not in my running shoes change my whole outlook on my life.  Even though everyone has bad days and bumps in the road, it can still be difficult to recognize these times for what they are – just a low moment in a long life – and try to remain positive about things improving or focus on all the positive things that are already in my life.

And just like how I allow my watch’s judgment to overshadow my own, I will sometimes let my reflection of myself in others change the way I feel about myself.  And I really shouldn’t. 

As a young girl in the 6^th grade, one of my friends became angry with me and accused me of “always trying to be perfect.”  My natural, overachieving personality clearly had upset this girl, and I remember questioning if I did have some sort of character flaw…Was I trying to be “perfect?”  Fortunately, another friend of mine, Janna, stood up for me and said, “You can’t be mad at her just because she makes good grades.”  Thanks, Janna.

On a more light-hearted note, I caught one of my sorority sisters in college stating I was “not cute” after her date said to mine, “Oh, you are here with cute Paula?”  It could have hurt my feelings (for the record I thought she was pretty), but instead it just became a huge joke with my friends to talk about how “not cute” I was.

I am certainly an imperfect person, and I am certainly my own worse critic.  But sometimes I forget that we are all imperfect people.  I may not always say the perfect things or act in perfect ways and I definitely do not kill every run, but sometimes the best thing I can do is to forgive myself.  We all deserve to just give ourselves a break sometimes.  Otherwise, we will run ourselves into the ground trying to beat our GPS watches or please others.

I know good days and bad days are part of the course for both marathon training and life.  Sometimes I stumble, sometimes I fall, sometimes I bleed, and sometimes I cry.   But so far I have always picked myself back up and continued to run. 

So whether it may be a bad run, a tough day at work, a hurtful comment from a friend, or an ex-boyfriend who didn’t respect me the way he should have – I am trying to not allow these negative thoughts to consume my mind and impact my entire outlook.  Instead, I’m trying to take the bad days with a grain a salt or – in the case of an ex-boyfriend – perhaps a large margarita.

MCM Training Week Eighteen:  71 Miles

After last week’s sub-par long run, I was happy to nail two important runs this week. 

First, on Friday, I ran 14 miles – 2 miles easy, 10 miles at marathon pace, and then 2 miles easy.  The run was comfortably hard, and I was happy to be able to hold the marathon pace at a reasonable effort.

The second important run of this week was my 20-mile long run on Sunday.  Scheduled to run at a “steady” pace, I completed the run with an average pace of just under 7:30 minutes/mile.  Perhaps more important, I felt solid and strong on the run.  Fingers crossed this is a good sign!!



This Week's Beer Choice:  Unita Brewing Co.'s Punk'n Ale (A pumpkin ale that actually tastes good!)