Listening to My Body

I said it before, but listening to my body has been the best thing I've done thus far in training. It still might not keep me injury free as I go through marathon training, but it'll give me a better chance of staying healthy.

Originally, I planned to give myself two days off after the 5K. However, I didn't push myself as much as I should've during the race and my legs weren't sore at all on Sunday. Therefore, I decided to stay at my parents house and run from there this morning.

I ran the somewhat hilly 4 mile route that I used to routinely do through the neighborhoods across the street. I didn't plan to go very hard. I surprised myself about a month ago when I ran this course with relative ease, so I didn't think running it again would be too difficult. I didn't anticipate the warm and humid weather at 10 AM either though. It wasn't any worse than it should be for this time of year, but it's been so cool and rainy recently that it was tough to adjust.

I went out at a nice rate and felt pretty good early on. It was clear that the heat would make the run tough. I tried to take it easy and run at comfortable pace over the hills. The last long hill really came up and bit me though. It wore me down a lot and my knee starting bothering me a little. After making it to the top, my knee felt better but I was exhausted.

After that it was relatively flat or downhill for about the next mile. I looked at my watch and had been running for 18 minutes. It's actually good that I'm starting to use my watch because that allowed me to push myself for a few more minutes. I knew I wouldn't finish the run, so I decided to increase my stride until my watch hit the 25 minute mark.

It was tough and seemed like forever. I finally hit that elapsed time just after another hill. That made for a good finish. I probably ran close to 3.25 miles. I could've forced the issue and finished the route, but it really would've just been a "junk" mile at the end. I need to make sure my runs are quality runs on most days I go out. I didn't go as far as I wanted, but was still able to push myself.

My dad took some pictures of me racing. I looked angry in everyone of them. I partly was because the run didn't go as planned, but regardless I need to work on relaxing. My track coach used to always yell at me to relax while running. I concentrated on doing that during this training run today. Hopefully, I can start carrying it over to races too.

I actually tried to do some striders in the grassy field at my old elementary school. I did mange two of them, but the grass was too long and the surface too rough. All the rain we've had is leading to some very high grass.

The next run will be Wednesday. I'll either run in the morning or the evening. Bill and Karen are running a race that evening. I was thinking I might run with Karen to help her finish well and give myself a somewhat easy training day. That's if I don't go to look at apartments that evening though. Thursday we'll be in Richmond for the Indy Car race. With nothing going on at the track, I'll look to take a short and easy run. I'll take Friday off and run long on Saturday morning (raceday).

I've been reading a marathon training book that I just bought. I already read over 200 pages in just 3 days. Pretty soon, I'm going to use the training program laid out in it to start planning my 18 week training period for the Philadelphia Marathon. They suggest that you use their novice program for anyone who is doing their first marathon. I'm tempted to use the program that is the next step up, but I don't want to overtrain so I guess I'll stay cautious. I really think I could qualify for Boston, but I guess I shouldn't shoot for that goal. It'll be obvious later in my training whether I have a legit shot at doing that or not and then maybe I can adjust.

I saw a few cool runs coming up in the summer. One is at my old elementary school behind my parents house. It's a 5K to support my HS track and cross country teams. I'm definitely going to run that, even if not competitively. Hopefully I'll catch up with my old coach and maybe some other runners from track too. There's also a 10K or 5K at New Jersey Motorsports Park in July. Maybe I'll see if I can get Bill and Karen to run it with me.