Sunday, September 16, 2012

not so great

I ran a 15k race this morning and it was not fun. It was awful actually.

This past week I've been battling something viral. It was in my sinuses and I just felt headachy and yucky all week. I didn't even run. Every night I felt too wiped and every morning there would be my sinus throbbing under my eye. And I wasn't that sick. I wasn't sick enough to stay in bed or really garner any sympathy. I went to my night class, and my volunteer gig, and made buns. Oh, and I kept questioning myself, am I really sick? I even wished I was more sick so I could justify staying in bed. I would say that both physically and mentally, it was not a great week. I felt rotten and pretty much alternated between self-pity and self-loathing the entire week. And that is exactly how the race went.

I felt okay, no sinus headache, definitely much better. I had googled, the night before,  how long it takes to lose your conditioning and I concluded that I would be fine. I wasn't fine. I   felt low, and about 5 k in, my left hip became furious. I could feel a muscle in my thigh curling into a cramp. This, I'm pretty sure is a result of not running all week. My legs were tight. Things did not get better. At 10k I was trying to remember a mantra about pain, and I was sure that if I could just call it to mind things would be so much better ... I couldn't, and instead I started thinking about how miserable I was. The words this is hell are not an effective running mantra by the way. I couldn't stop thinking about the pain in my hip and how rotten I felt. I knew this was not a good thing to be doing, but I couldn't, and didn't stop. It's actually remarkable that I wasn't crying when I crossed the finish line.

It's disappointing because my training's been going well. I had been really looking forward to this race. I probably shouldn't have run it.

The running mantra I was trying to remember was, Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. I'm not sure it would have helped, but it is a pretty accurate description of the situation.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

emission

Well here I am again. We're on a term break so I have more time than usual and no excuses not to write The last couple of weeks of a term are always a little stressful; everyone's  tired and the exams.. all the drama and stress surrounding exams. I don't like exams much... Well, I kind of like preparing exams (it's like making a puzzle) but I hate invigilating and I don't like correcting much so... I'm glad it's over.

When I got home from school on Friday, I sat in my chair at the dining room table until all my grades were entered into the system... it took tremendous effort (I had a complete set of exams to finish) and it made me rather grumpy (my kids were in a woohoo-school's-out kind of mood). Oh, and if that wasn't testament enough to my impressive will power, after I finished with the grades I went to bed early and got up at an ungodly hour to do my long run. No celebratory beer was drunk until Saturday night. But that celebratory beer was drunk at the beach. So I really can't complain.

Yes, we got to the beach. It was fantastic. It was relaxing, lots of eating and reading and messing around in the water. There weren't too many people and the weather was nice. I think we are all recharged.