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Last week my running came to an abrupt and seriously major halt as I prepared at the last minute to run a marathon on Sunday after racing my fastest half marathon ever. It was a crazy and emotional week for me. I was doing an insanely quick “taper,” my daughter started first grade at a new school, two of my kids caught a cold which I later came down with, we had record rain fall that led to school being canceled one day, and I was preparing to run 26.2 miles for the first time in well over a year. It made me a little nutty! But, I survived.
This week is filled with even more changes and less running. My son started preschool yesterday and I am still recovering from my race on Sunday. Seeing my little guy off to school had me feeling very OFF. Yes, I was extremely proud of him for being such a big boy. Yes, I am excited to have 4 hours every afternoon with just one child to take care of. But I missed my buddy Will yesterday in a big way. I put the baby in the running stroller after feeding him lunch and thought I would do an easy paced run to work the soreness out of my muscles and the lump that was sitting in my throat (from missing my buddy) out of the way. After a few small steps though I decided it was too soon to run on these legs. My quads were really sore from all those hills on Sunday and though it is nothing major I just wanted to give it a little more time. So I went for a walk instead and it felt good.
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| he is seriously happy to start school! |
I’ve decided that running a marathon while you’re in the middle of marathon training is AWESOME. I am so happy that I did it and I know I will do it again in the future. I mean really, I’m working so hard to train for just ONE marathon!? Yea, NO, that is just not going to cut it for me these days anymore. The only problem I’m finding is that I’m really itching to run right now but because of last week’s reduced mileage in preparation for the race and this week’s reduced mileage due to recovery I just can’t do it. I need to respect the soreness and in a few days’ time I will be back to my training regime again. I have 22 miles on tap for this weekend. I’m not sure how many miles I’ll get done between now and then but I do know that I’m not going to push it and will take it easy so that next week I can get back into speed work and higher mileage.
Have you ever run more than one marathon in a season? Have you used a marathon as a “training run” before? Sunday’s race wasn’t part of my original training plan. I’d love to hear how you prepare for and recover from mid-training marathons if you have ever done this before!
