Saturday "Long" Run

I put long in quotation marks because by most standards five miles is not a long run. I am well aware of that fact, but when it is the longest run I do all week it only feels appropriate to label it as such. I’ve been doing my long runs with the Wow! Bootcamp  AthHalf run group. I like the Wow! group run for a lot of reasons: It is motivating to run with a group, they plan out the distance and mark the route for us, parts of the half marathon are covered on the runs so I know what to expect in those areas, they have water stops for us, and it helps keep me accountable. They plan it all; I just have to show up. This week it was a 5 mile run. I knew from looking at the route that was sent out that it was going to be hilly and tough.

I woke up to tummy troubles and hoped it wasn’t a sign of what was to come that morning. The last long run I’d done (4 miles) I didn’t eat before and my stomach growled the last 2 miles. I’d picked up some new bars at the store and decided to try them as breakfast. I have no appetite in the morning; in fact eating makes me nauseas so I tried to be careful. I ate half of a coconut almond Kind bar in the car on the way to the Y. It was so delicious; it tasted like one of those off brand chewy honey oat bars my mom used to buy. It tasted good, but did not make my stomach feel good. When I got to the Y I tried to go in and use the bathroom in the lobby but the building wasn’t open yet. Fail. I was just going to have to deal.

We did some warm up drills, Zoe showed up, and we were off. At the start I told Zoe that I was tight and sore from pushing it the last half mile of my run yesterday (idiot, I knew I had to run again 12 hours later) and that my stomach was bothering me. I told myself that it would all shake out by the time the first mile marker rolled around. I usually feel better after a mile (although I used to hate people who said that) and I was right, kind of. My muscles were looser and my stomach was fine, and then we hit a hill (and another and another ad nauseam for 4 miles). I knew it was coming and thought it was going to kill me. Surprisingly, it didn’t and Zoe and I high fived at the top #nerdalert.

I would like to stop here and explain that I am a slow runner. I know that and I am okay with it. I mean, sure I would like to crank out 8 minute miles like its nothing but I can’t, at least not right now. Maybe someday….So in order to not burnout my slow, steady pace is about 11:00 minute miles (I know, you can walk that fast, blah, blah, Runner Lauren don’t care). After Zoe and I conquered the hill my running app told me that we’d just run a 9:45 mile. We were all “hooray!” and “oops, crap!” at the same time.

Let’s just say shit hit the fan. I felt like I was made of bricks, my right knee was hurting, my left IT band was screaming, I was getting blisters for no apparent reason. We got to the water stop at the 3 mile mark I commented that this was easily the worst run I’d had in 2 months, someone told us that it was 100% humidity. So, that explained some of it, but really it was the perfect storm. I wasn’t logging my weekly miles the way I needed to be to in order to do longer weekend mileage, I didn’t stretch after my run on Friday and pushed too hard, I didn’t sleep well the night before and it was insanely hot and humid for 7:30am.

I often have to remind myself when I don’t want to run on a Wednesday that I will pay for it later. Bottom line: long runs suck a lot less when you get your week day mileage in. And I also have to keep in mind that you have to have bad runs to appreciate the good ones.

When all was said and done the route ended up being 5.42 miles and it hurt and humbled me. I went home and told Michael “that run tried to kill me.” Which it did, but it also motivated me to do better this week; running is a bitch like that.