A Fearful 14 Miles

Don’t worry – the title of this post has nothing to do with anything unsafe happening to me on my run this morning, it just expresses my state of mind during and after my run. I woke up this morning to see the sun shining and the temperature hovering around 37-37 degrees. All signs pointed to me running my 14 miles outside. Thank goodness because the thought of running 14 miles on the treadmill seemed daunting.

I headed out around 9:00 a.m. – I woke up a bit late today. My trek to Central Park wasn’t even so bad – the streets are much clearer and the intersections only have a few big puddles here and there. I made it into Central Park and was thrilled to see the drive completely cleared and filled with runners!

Hooray – I hopped on the drive and began my run. And within a few minutes I noticed that my pace was slower than normal. I thought to myself: “This is fine. I’ve had 9 days off from running. I need to ease back into it and should be taking things slow.”

I’ll let you in on a secret ritual I have: I always tell myself that my speed and pace for every run don’t matter. That way, I feel less pressure and don’t get nerves before my runs. However, although I tell myself this – I always still try to push it a bit to reach my ideal times.

So I told myself the usual and then was very upset when I wasn’t running faster. The marathon is not so far away anymore and I my speed needs to be stronger. I know, I’m a big complainer, but this run just made me very nervous that I can’t actually reach my BQ goal. Anyway – here are my stats from the run:

Mile 1 – 9:31
Mile 2 – 8:33
Mile 3 – 8:56
Mile 4 – 9:13
Mile 5 – 8:59
Mile 6 – 8:37
Mile 7 – 8:48
Mile 8 – 9:03
Mile 9 – 9:11
Mile 10 – 9:09
Mile 11 – 9:05
Mile 12 – 9:06
Mile 13 – 9:10
Mile 14 – 9:55

Total mileage – 14.11 in 2:08:22.

I already know that people are going to tell me that looks like a great run. It didn’t feel like a great run. And if I look back at my recent runs, I’ve been hovering around 8:30-8:45 for most of my mile splits and was feeling great! This run was soo hard and I felt like I was really pushing it and still only hitting about 9 minute miles. I’m just getting nervous.

Now that I’m feeling better, it’s time to start really sticking to my training plan and kicking it in high gear if I want to have ANY chance of qualifying for Boston.

Sorry for the long rant – I think I’m just trying to rationalize my bad run and pump myself up.

Anyway, here are my eats from Saturday:

I made a breakfast cookie yesterday that actually wasn’t that great. I was kind of just making up the ingredient amounts as I went and I should have stuck to the original recipe more closely.

Later in the afternoon I made myself a weird little sandwich – it had beans, grape tomatoes, a slice of cheddar cheese, baby spinach and salsa on an Arnold Thin. It was a little messy, but it hit the spot.

I was very happy when Hubby offered to make venison chili for dinner. I used up some leftover pasta and added it to the chili in prep for my Sunday morning run.

And finally, for dessert I had some walnuts with raisins.

So those were my eats yesterday. Kind of boring, but I never like to try anything too crazy the day before a run.

And I was seriously in bed by 11:00 p.m. last night and didn’t get out of bed until 7:45 a.m. this morning. That was a lot of sleep, but I think I needed it.

Here’s my question to you all – do you ever get nervous that you won’t be able to meet a goal you’ve set for yourself? How do you handle that fear?