Monday, January 30, 2012

Running On Empty

1/28/12     After my 5.5 mile zombie run Friday afternoon followed by 5 hours of on-my-feet-continuously work, I only needed minutes to take out my contacts and fall asleep midway through my collapsing down into bed. It was the only way that I’d be able to wake up at 4am and be ready for my early morning run when Matt parked his car outside my house around 4:30, in a mere seven hours. Sleep is a good thing, in fact I wish there were more than 24 hours in a day so I could log as many hours of sleep as I do miles of running. Nevertheless, the sleep I was able to get was enough to have me rested and ready to run just 12 hours after my run the day before.
     Running with someone else is always easier than running alone. Not only because of the added motivation to keep up and stay on pace, but also because my training partners never worry about mileage totals as much as they do about how their body feels (or in this case how my body feels) during a run. Even before we set out on our run, Matt said he’d be fine running anywhere between 7 and 10 miles. This window would allow me to judge how sore my feet were, as well as my energy level, during the run without having to worry about being able to tough it out and finish a preset distance.
     After a 2-mile warm-up, our pace would quicken to about an 8-minute-per-mile pace. That is around the pace Matt would like to run our May 6th marathon at and on a normal day I would be able to go for awhile at that pace, but after a long week of running hard and little sleep, I told Matt about 4 miles into his marathon pace that I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold the pace without slowing him down. At that point of the run he said he was happy with what we had already run and was fine with using the remaining distance to my house as a warm-down. If everyone in the world were as compassionate and understanding as runners, the world would be a much better place.

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