Maybe I don't have a compulsive need to exercise, in which case I'm down to only two of the symptoms of overtraining.
I had an awesome run planned for this morning. After months of searching, I found a route that we'd run that had an elevation change of 140 feet over 2 miles (but we'd run it downhill, not up, it was a loop day). At MTCM, there is a climb of about 160 feet over just over 2 miles, and initially I wasn't nervous about it at all, but Adam has freaked me out a little. He's mentioned it a bunch of times. Hill repeats were on about 90 feet climbing over about .25 miles, so I tried to imagine going up it twice in a row. Doesn't seem too bad, but Adam's point (which is correct) is more that 160 feet on a hill repeat morning, or at mile 3 of a marathon even, is very different from 160 feet at mile 21ish of a marathon.
Either way, as part of my mental efforts, I was thinking it would be a good idea to run that hill here. Then on race day, I'll know exactly what it's like. I'll be able to tell myself I just did this climb and it's not that bad, that I can handle it with ease and then enjoy the downhill finish.
The plan today was to sleep a little late (6:30, part of my taper extra ZZZs plan), then meet Mike at 7:30 to run up the hill for 2 miles, and then I told him I didn't care what we did -- run, jog, walk or crawl back to our cars. Preferably walk at least 1 mile of it. Right before I left work, he emailed and said "rain or shine, I assume?" I said let's talk around 7 if it's questionable.
I woke up to rain, thunder and lightning. I waited a little while and the thunder and lightning seemed to ease up, but the rain was still steady. So I called him and he said maybe we could delay an hour. And I said ... or ... we could just bag the run today and do it on Wed? He liked that idea, so I'm back in bed at 7:30 in the morning! Sooo nice. And now there's no temptation to go to camp on Wed. or run too far.
Another reason this is so perfect was that I got a comment on my blog yesterday (!!) from Seattle Runner Girl (!!!, I've read her blog for more than a year) who suggested I work on my mental marathon prep first thing in the morning. I figured I already have to get up at 4:30ish one day a week, 4:50ish three days a week, and 5:00 three days a week. Earlier than that sounds like torture. I feel like we already go to bed earlier than most 8 year olds, but being fairly newly married makes that much easier.
I thought I could adapt her suggestion and spend some time really thinking about my training, race day, goals, etc. immediately after I run each day. I usually come home, make breakfast, and eat while watching the news. But news isn't really needed, they repeat the stuff every hour anyway. So I thought I could maybe stretch, eat and really think about it then. But with no run this morning and a day when I really shouldn't work out at all (unless I run 2-3 miles per the schedule), there's plenty of time to do some marathon thinking right now!
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