Unfortunately, this isn't going to be the "I did it!" exciting race report I'd hoped. Just a forewarning.
As you can probably guess from my title, I did not run the half-marathon today. Thirteen weeks ago, I announced that I was going to run a comeback half, because I really felt ready to get back into running.
Training went really well for the first 10 weeks. I can honestly say that I enjoyed doing the long runs with Jerry. If not for him, it would have been a big struggle to get them done. We had a lot of fun together, and always felt so accomplished when we were done! (You can read my weekly reports here)
As I mentioned in my last post, I'm a bit of a mess right now. I am in a depressive episode of bipolar, and my anxiety has been acting up quite a bit as well. I've been stressed out and I feel a ton of pressure to turn things around, but I have such a hard time doing it. And the more time that passes, the more pressure I feel.
(Side note: Thank you SO MUCH, by the way, for all of the kind comments on my last post. I had full intentions of replying to each comment, but the irony is that I am lacking motivation to do anything right now. I hope to reply soon. But I really do appreciate all of the kindness. If not for you all, I don't know how I would get through things sometimes. You have been so helpful and so kind. Thank you.)
Anyway, I still planned to run today's half-marathon up until last night. The weather forecast had been looking bad for a while, but with Michigan weather, you never know until it's right on top of you. One day (yesterday) it can be sunny and 70, and the next day (today) it can be 35, pouring rain, with 20 mph winds.
This screen shot was two hours after the start of the race, so the weather wasn't even this good during the race itself.
When I signed up for this race, I had no intentions of setting a PR, or even hitting a certain time. I simply wanted to make running FUN again and enjoy it! My sister wanted someone to run this race with her, so I agreed that this would be my comeback race. Jerry signed up as well, and I could picture the three of us jogging the course, laughing, maybe taking some pictures, and just having fun.
As the weather forecast got worse (due to the midwest SNOW storm!) I started wondering how fun this was going to be. I had paid a lot of money for us to do the race (and the kids were signed up for the 5K), so I was pretty insistent that we were going to do it. My sister came into town yesterday, and as we talked about what to do, we looked at the forecast again and after a ton of deliberation, decided not to do the race.
It was a gamble. If it turned out to be a nice day, I was going to be bummed that we decided not to do it! When we got up this morning, though, I was very confident that we made the right decision. It's been raining all day, and not just drizzle, or scattered rain--it's raining pretty hard. There is a flood warning, and tonight we actually have a WINTER STORM WARNING... in April!
I know this sounds like a lot of excuses, and back in my running heyday, I would have rolled my eyes at the thought of a runner skipping a race due to weather. I ran a marathon when the heat index was over 100 degrees, for God's sake! But it wasn't fun. And since I want to have FUN running again, today's race would not have been the way to do that.
So, this is my long-winded way of explaining why I didn't do the race today. Instead, Jeanie (my sister) suggested that we do the "race" at the Rec center on the treadmills. I had to stop and think about what could possibly be worse--hypothermia while running outside? Or running for over two and a half hours on a treadmill?
However, I was somehow convinced that it might actually be enjoyable to have the three of us (Jeanie, Jerry, and me) running side by side at the gym. I figured that if I absolutely hated it, I could just quit early.
Last night, I downloaded a movie and a couple of TV shows to my iPad, as well as several podcast episodes that sounded interesting. The gym opened at 9:00 this morning. Jeanie was registered to run the 5K AND the half marathon (16.2 miles total), so she came over to my house to run 5K on my treadmill before we headed to the gym.
I read my race report of this race from 2013, and the breakfast I'd eaten that day looked SO good that I really wanted to eat it again today. So, I made it--oatmeal with strawberries and mini chocolate chips. (I was lucky that I had frozen strawberries on hand). (It was kind of eerie reading the race report--the same weather issues happened back then, too! The outcome was different, then, though.)
When we got to the Rec, I immediately didn't like the set up of the room or the treadmills themselves. At home, my treadmill has a nice holder for my iPad, so it's directly in my line of vision. The treadmills at the gym had a console that was very low, so I had to just set my iPad on that (which forced my head to look down while running, and that's not good running posture).
The room itself doesn't have any fans, and it's fairly small. I immediately worried about getting way too hot. The treadmill had a tiny little fan on it, but that is never enough (at home, I have a very strong floor fan that I use).
Side note:
Yesterday, I got another ear piercing--my tragus, which is that little nub in the front of your ear.
Eli wanted to get his ear lobes pierced, and I have been wanting to do my left tragus for a while; I was just waiting for the newer piercings in my right ear to heal first. So, after I picked him up from track practice yesterday, we had a mother-son bonding experience at the tattoo shop, hahahaha.
Anyway, the point of that is that I discovered I can't comfortably wear earbuds right now. Once my piercing heals, I think it'll be okay, but I didn't want to mess around with it too much and have my ear get inflamed. That was another bummer about running at the gym; at home, I can just turn the volume up loud and I don't need to wear earbuds.
I turned on a movie called Jungle, which was supposed to be pretty action packed and suspenseful--just what I needed for a 13.1 mile run on the treadmill! I had a hard time concentrating on it, though, because there were a bunch of high school guys on the machines behind me (I think it was a wrestling team or something). Their coach was yelling instructions for them to go faster, etc, and the room echoed his voice really loudly, so I couldn't hear my movie well.
I realized that I just wasn't having fun. And since my goal with getting back to running is making it fun, I wasn't accomplishing that at all. It seemed stupid for me to continue to run for 13.1 miles when I didn't enjoy it. So, I decided to run for 30 minutes for the cardio workout, and then I called it quits. I had been running at 5.0 mph, and only completed 2.5 miles total. Thankfully, we drove to the Rec center separately in case that happened, so I wished Jeanie and Jerry luck and then I headed home.
I felt like a failure, but again, my goal was to have fun. And that just wasn't happening. Jerry made it through 10 miles before his knee started bothering him and he quit. He was really disappointed, but I was super impressed with him for getting that far on a treadmill!
Jeanie simply blows my mind. She is a fucking ROCKSTAR when it comes to running on the 'mill! She did all 16.2 miles (as I knew she would--she regularly does her long runs on the treadmill).
Anyway, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, I know I made the right decision to skip the actual race (the rain + cold + wind would have been miserable). On the other hand, I am disappointed in myself for not getting in all 13.1 miles today as planned.
My goal was to have fun, so I failed at that--but most of that was out of my control. I'm sure if the weather had been nice and we ran the race together in Dearborn, I would have enjoyed it a lot! But the alternative option wasn't much better, so in that aspect, I feel like I made the right decision as well.
Where do I go from here? Well, I want to continue to run. What I don't want, though, is any pressure when it comes to running. I want to enjoy it! Just as last year was all about living my happiest life, I want to work on that again the best I can. I haven't figured out the details yet, but I'm thinking that I'd like to keep my running plan simple--maybe 30 minutes 4-5 times per week. I'd like to run at a very easy pace. It would be a great time to do heart rate training again (running at a low heart rate to improve my endurance). My most enjoyable runs are when I run at a low heart rate, so it would be a good solution.
The heart rate training was very helpful with my weight loss, too. So, maybe I can take off the 15 pounds that I've picked up, and actually enjoy myself while doing it. (Of course, it's going to take a dietary change to drop the weight, but the running does help me mentally as far as motivating me to eat better.)
Now that the race is over, I feel a giant sense of relief. I didn't finish it, obviously, but now it's not hanging over my head. Now I can return to focusing on what makes me happy. I've learned that I don't enjoy running more than about six miles at a time, so I'm thinking that I will stick with a 10K or shorter distance. I probably won't do any races (at least not in the foreseeable future). What sounds best to me right now is just no-pressure running for fitness and enjoyment (and feeling a sense of accomplishment, no matter what the distance or speed).
So, despite not finishing what I started 13 weeks ago, today wasn't a total bust. I learned what I want to get out of running, what I enjoy and don't enjoy, what makes me feel pressured and what makes me happy.
I hope I can use these discoveries to get back on the right track to physical (and mental!) wellness. Jerry is going to be starting his Insanity workouts on Monday, and the last time he did that, he got in the best shape of his life. It'd be nice to get back into shape with him, so I'm going to work on finding a FUN way to do so! :)
(Check out Jerry's pictures from when he did Insanity a few years ago. The picture on the left is at his goal weight, but on Day 1 of starting the Insanity workouts. The pic on the right is after completing the Insanity workout regimen. I believe his weight stayed the same, but you can clearly see that he built some serious definition in his muscles.)
As you can probably guess from my title, I did not run the half-marathon today. Thirteen weeks ago, I announced that I was going to run a comeback half, because I really felt ready to get back into running.
Training went really well for the first 10 weeks. I can honestly say that I enjoyed doing the long runs with Jerry. If not for him, it would have been a big struggle to get them done. We had a lot of fun together, and always felt so accomplished when we were done! (You can read my weekly reports here)
As I mentioned in my last post, I'm a bit of a mess right now. I am in a depressive episode of bipolar, and my anxiety has been acting up quite a bit as well. I've been stressed out and I feel a ton of pressure to turn things around, but I have such a hard time doing it. And the more time that passes, the more pressure I feel.
(Side note: Thank you SO MUCH, by the way, for all of the kind comments on my last post. I had full intentions of replying to each comment, but the irony is that I am lacking motivation to do anything right now. I hope to reply soon. But I really do appreciate all of the kindness. If not for you all, I don't know how I would get through things sometimes. You have been so helpful and so kind. Thank you.)
Anyway, I still planned to run today's half-marathon up until last night. The weather forecast had been looking bad for a while, but with Michigan weather, you never know until it's right on top of you. One day (yesterday) it can be sunny and 70, and the next day (today) it can be 35, pouring rain, with 20 mph winds.
This screen shot was two hours after the start of the race, so the weather wasn't even this good during the race itself.
When I signed up for this race, I had no intentions of setting a PR, or even hitting a certain time. I simply wanted to make running FUN again and enjoy it! My sister wanted someone to run this race with her, so I agreed that this would be my comeback race. Jerry signed up as well, and I could picture the three of us jogging the course, laughing, maybe taking some pictures, and just having fun.
As the weather forecast got worse (due to the midwest SNOW storm!) I started wondering how fun this was going to be. I had paid a lot of money for us to do the race (and the kids were signed up for the 5K), so I was pretty insistent that we were going to do it. My sister came into town yesterday, and as we talked about what to do, we looked at the forecast again and after a ton of deliberation, decided not to do the race.
It was a gamble. If it turned out to be a nice day, I was going to be bummed that we decided not to do it! When we got up this morning, though, I was very confident that we made the right decision. It's been raining all day, and not just drizzle, or scattered rain--it's raining pretty hard. There is a flood warning, and tonight we actually have a WINTER STORM WARNING... in April!
I know this sounds like a lot of excuses, and back in my running heyday, I would have rolled my eyes at the thought of a runner skipping a race due to weather. I ran a marathon when the heat index was over 100 degrees, for God's sake! But it wasn't fun. And since I want to have FUN running again, today's race would not have been the way to do that.
So, this is my long-winded way of explaining why I didn't do the race today. Instead, Jeanie (my sister) suggested that we do the "race" at the Rec center on the treadmills. I had to stop and think about what could possibly be worse--hypothermia while running outside? Or running for over two and a half hours on a treadmill?
However, I was somehow convinced that it might actually be enjoyable to have the three of us (Jeanie, Jerry, and me) running side by side at the gym. I figured that if I absolutely hated it, I could just quit early.
Last night, I downloaded a movie and a couple of TV shows to my iPad, as well as several podcast episodes that sounded interesting. The gym opened at 9:00 this morning. Jeanie was registered to run the 5K AND the half marathon (16.2 miles total), so she came over to my house to run 5K on my treadmill before we headed to the gym.
I read my race report of this race from 2013, and the breakfast I'd eaten that day looked SO good that I really wanted to eat it again today. So, I made it--oatmeal with strawberries and mini chocolate chips. (I was lucky that I had frozen strawberries on hand). (It was kind of eerie reading the race report--the same weather issues happened back then, too! The outcome was different, then, though.)
When we got to the Rec, I immediately didn't like the set up of the room or the treadmills themselves. At home, my treadmill has a nice holder for my iPad, so it's directly in my line of vision. The treadmills at the gym had a console that was very low, so I had to just set my iPad on that (which forced my head to look down while running, and that's not good running posture).
The room itself doesn't have any fans, and it's fairly small. I immediately worried about getting way too hot. The treadmill had a tiny little fan on it, but that is never enough (at home, I have a very strong floor fan that I use).
Side note:
Yesterday, I got another ear piercing--my tragus, which is that little nub in the front of your ear.
Eli wanted to get his ear lobes pierced, and I have been wanting to do my left tragus for a while; I was just waiting for the newer piercings in my right ear to heal first. So, after I picked him up from track practice yesterday, we had a mother-son bonding experience at the tattoo shop, hahahaha.
Anyway, the point of that is that I discovered I can't comfortably wear earbuds right now. Once my piercing heals, I think it'll be okay, but I didn't want to mess around with it too much and have my ear get inflamed. That was another bummer about running at the gym; at home, I can just turn the volume up loud and I don't need to wear earbuds.
I turned on a movie called Jungle, which was supposed to be pretty action packed and suspenseful--just what I needed for a 13.1 mile run on the treadmill! I had a hard time concentrating on it, though, because there were a bunch of high school guys on the machines behind me (I think it was a wrestling team or something). Their coach was yelling instructions for them to go faster, etc, and the room echoed his voice really loudly, so I couldn't hear my movie well.
I realized that I just wasn't having fun. And since my goal with getting back to running is making it fun, I wasn't accomplishing that at all. It seemed stupid for me to continue to run for 13.1 miles when I didn't enjoy it. So, I decided to run for 30 minutes for the cardio workout, and then I called it quits. I had been running at 5.0 mph, and only completed 2.5 miles total. Thankfully, we drove to the Rec center separately in case that happened, so I wished Jeanie and Jerry luck and then I headed home.
I felt like a failure, but again, my goal was to have fun. And that just wasn't happening. Jerry made it through 10 miles before his knee started bothering him and he quit. He was really disappointed, but I was super impressed with him for getting that far on a treadmill!
Jeanie simply blows my mind. She is a fucking ROCKSTAR when it comes to running on the 'mill! She did all 16.2 miles (as I knew she would--she regularly does her long runs on the treadmill).
Anyway, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, I know I made the right decision to skip the actual race (the rain + cold + wind would have been miserable). On the other hand, I am disappointed in myself for not getting in all 13.1 miles today as planned.
My goal was to have fun, so I failed at that--but most of that was out of my control. I'm sure if the weather had been nice and we ran the race together in Dearborn, I would have enjoyed it a lot! But the alternative option wasn't much better, so in that aspect, I feel like I made the right decision as well.
Where do I go from here? Well, I want to continue to run. What I don't want, though, is any pressure when it comes to running. I want to enjoy it! Just as last year was all about living my happiest life, I want to work on that again the best I can. I haven't figured out the details yet, but I'm thinking that I'd like to keep my running plan simple--maybe 30 minutes 4-5 times per week. I'd like to run at a very easy pace. It would be a great time to do heart rate training again (running at a low heart rate to improve my endurance). My most enjoyable runs are when I run at a low heart rate, so it would be a good solution.
The heart rate training was very helpful with my weight loss, too. So, maybe I can take off the 15 pounds that I've picked up, and actually enjoy myself while doing it. (Of course, it's going to take a dietary change to drop the weight, but the running does help me mentally as far as motivating me to eat better.)
Now that the race is over, I feel a giant sense of relief. I didn't finish it, obviously, but now it's not hanging over my head. Now I can return to focusing on what makes me happy. I've learned that I don't enjoy running more than about six miles at a time, so I'm thinking that I will stick with a 10K or shorter distance. I probably won't do any races (at least not in the foreseeable future). What sounds best to me right now is just no-pressure running for fitness and enjoyment (and feeling a sense of accomplishment, no matter what the distance or speed).
So, despite not finishing what I started 13 weeks ago, today wasn't a total bust. I learned what I want to get out of running, what I enjoy and don't enjoy, what makes me feel pressured and what makes me happy.
I hope I can use these discoveries to get back on the right track to physical (and mental!) wellness. Jerry is going to be starting his Insanity workouts on Monday, and the last time he did that, he got in the best shape of his life. It'd be nice to get back into shape with him, so I'm going to work on finding a FUN way to do so! :)
(Check out Jerry's pictures from when he did Insanity a few years ago. The picture on the left is at his goal weight, but on Day 1 of starting the Insanity workouts. The pic on the right is after completing the Insanity workout regimen. I believe his weight stayed the same, but you can clearly see that he built some serious definition in his muscles.)
