But to be honest my runs haven’t been good this week. Already noted how I felt bushed during the twelve mile trot earlier this week, and a somewhat similar fate befell the eight miler the day after. I needed to stop at Staples and plotted my route to swing past their local store at mile six so I could dash inside for a quick purchase. Everything went as planned, but when I tried to re-start for the last two miles I was saddled with ennui and had a terrible time getting the pace back up. Although I eventually regained my stride, it wasn’t until there was only a mile remaining.
Two possible causes. First might be increasing humidity as summer becomes more evident. I’ve definitely been sweating profusely the last few runs and perhaps I need to pay more attention to proper hydration. A secondary pitfall might be a lack of motivation. Haven’t received any donations for several weeks and as much time as I devote to keeping this blog current it is disappointing to have zero feedback.
Right before the marathon I received several nice donations and it truly touched me. Were it not for gratitude I may have tossed in the towel then, given the broken wrist. My hope is to inspire fellow diabetics while raising funds for research and I recognized it would require a lot of work, but I didn’t count on the absurd time investment the training would necessitate. Not only is the ‘free-time clock’ virtually bankrupted by being out on the road so much, I am frankly quite exhausted by the regimen and it takes an effort just to sit here and type out these updates, let alone dream up ways to publicize the effort and then implement. The absence of any response around the effort doesn’t help.
So I’ll try to not psyche myself out, but I stopped at mile eighteen today and walked for a half mile. The conscious thought was “I’m pooped and what does it matter?” Fate sent out a life preserver though. As I was walking (at a brisk pace), I was passed on the opposite side of the road by the first other runner I had ever witnessed on Dow Road (the road I take that goes behind Kure Beach). There are a ton of bicyclists out here but no other runners. Anyway, she ran ahead of me and then stopped for a minute with her head down and breathing hard – I gestured to ask if she was okay, but she had headphones on and didn’t acknowledge me so I continued walking. Anyway, this back-and-forth persisted for another quarter mile and as I started to feel rejuvenated I was pulling ahead of the runner. It occurred to me that I had already run an absurd distance and was walking faster than a fellow human being was atempting to run…so I picked the trot back up and endured another four miles at an okay pace before punting again.
Regardless, a sad entry in the running log and I will do my best to turn in a solid ten mile run tomorrow. Hopefully that conclusion to another 60-mile week will prevent things from falling apart. For a while today I was honestly considering whether it was worth the pain and suffering…
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