Monday, March 05, 2012

In The Long Run: Feeling It.

Here's another installment in the ongoing documentation of mine and Triple T's Long Runs.

This last run was the longest that I'm going to do before my Half Marathon in two weeks. (March 18th) It was 12 miles, which is the farthest I've ran in at least a year.

Normally at the end of a run I have that happy, tired-but-still-gas-in-the-tank feeling. I'll admit that after this run, I was fucking exhausted - and honestly, I wasn't even going that fast. (It's called a Long Slow Run for a reason.)

Did I feel good about the run? Absolutely. Making that distance, after just 2 months of training, is a big boost - but how wiped I was has me a bit concerned with how I'm going to be after running a longer distance at a faster pace.

I've heard of leaving it all on the race course, but I don't think they meant my corpse.

I guess that feeling the effects of the run mean that I've pushed myself, and that is always a good thing - you can't get better if you never try harder, right?

I'll admit - In my head I still gauge my training and progress by how I used to be two years ago, before injury and everything afterwards. After I finished this run, I thought about how I used to do 22-23 mile training runs before my Marathon and then go and work 8 hours - the fact that I did 12 and still made it to work made me feel like a hero.

I guess it's just part of being that Middle-Aged Runner, which is way better than being that Middle-Aged-Guy-Sitting-On-The-Couch.

(The irony that I'm sitting on the couch as I type this is not lost on me.)

Triple T had a longer run than me this week, (As I think she does every week) go see how she felt about it here.





Later.

2 comments:

  1. I am envious that you are about to taper. Super, super envious. I get a break next week -- just 1.5 hours, but then I jump back to 3.5 and then 4(ish) the following weeks.

    I have no idea how you work after your long runs. I am an absolute piece of poop after mine. Sometimes, even too tired to knit...

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  2. I find if I carb load not too long after my long runs it makes a 100% difference in how I feel for the rest of the day.

    Nice run!!

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