Hope everyone had a lovely Easter Sunday with lots of chocolate! It’s weird, but lately I feel as if I’ve gone off chocolate. I don’t feel tempted by it at all, not one bit. Weird, right? Instead I find myself gravitating towards more savory, carb-heavy foods like potatoes, pasta and garlic bread. So even though I don’t feel like eating chocolate, I have to watch out to make sure I don’t overeat on my savory snacks!
Now onto the training.
Running outdoors brings you into close encounters with all kinds of wildlife, like all those birds having their little meeting around the tree sticking out of the park pond in the picture above. And looking at that picture also reminded me of a close encounter I recently had with a giant pelican pooping from the top of a street lamp directly in my path while staring defiantly at me! In another few minutes, I’d be right under its path so I just ducked my head and ran as fast as I could under the street lamp while thanking the fates that I had decided to pop on a baseball cap for my run even though it had looked like a pretty cloudy day. Luckily, no poopage hit my head, cap or no cap!
My short runs are reaching the 8-10km mark now and I’m looking at pushing my long runs to 12km and beyond. Unfortunately this also means I’ve hit another mental road block. I know that physically I can do it, but suddenly my head is freaking out and I’m thinking, no, no, this is getting way too far, I can’t do it. I think this has to do with the fact that my usual river circuit is just a little over 6km long so I can usually stretch it out to a 8-10km run if I run down a few other close by roads as well. But now the thought of going around that 6km circuit twice suddenly and inexplicably terrifies me. If I were to go on a circuit that takes me exactly 20km without having to double back and do the same stretch twice or three times, I could probably do it but the fact that I have to re-run what I’ve just gone through all over again just makes my head space flip out. I thought I had the whole mental challenge while running thing worked out, but now I have a feeling I’ve got to go back to my positive thinking strategies for running and get myself back into a good head space all over again!
So this week, I freaked out a little while doing the 12km run and ended up just walking/running the route. Because I was incorporating walking in the route, I decided to up the ante and push my distance and I ended up doing a 16km run/walk. I figured if I could walk/run my way through this, it would be easier when I’m actually running the full course in the future. Fingers crossed!
Another thing that’s hit me with the long runs is the fact that they are that: long. So it takes far more time to do a run than I would with a shorter 3-5km run which means I have to do more planning around my day to ensure I get a run in.
So this was what my training looked like in week 15:
April 14th to 20th:
Monday: 8km run
Tuesday: 9km run
Wednesday: Rest Day
Thursday: ½ hour swim
Friday: 16km run/walk
Saturday: Body Pump
Sunday: Rest Day
The last few weeks of sickness have really thrown my training out of whack and technically I should be further along in my distance than what I am now. So hopefully I can get back on track and get rid of the mental roadblocks in my way!
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