Make measurable progress in reasonable time. – Jim Rohn
It is a very, very cool thing to see how far you’ve come over a few short months. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been training for a half marathon since May. I got the inspiration to run a half-marathon again from a few of my friends from college who were training to run the Pittsburgh half-marathon. I also remembered how great of shape I was in after running a half-marathon in 2017, and I wanted to get to that point again.
So I set off and began training in May with one of my friends from work. I started using the Nike Training Club app, which is what I used for the half-marathon in 2017, to schedule my workouts. It’s really straight-forward and easy to use! You pick your race date (they’ll let you know if you start training too early or too late) and will adjust workouts based on how many times you want to run per week. I set mine at 5, which I felt was doable because I was also working a part-time job three days a week.
A few weeks into my training regiment, I got to the point that I had to run 5 miles. That was the “long run” for that week and also my first 5-mile run since the last time I trained for the half-marathon. I remember only getting halfway in and feeling defeated- I had unbearable hip pain and I hobbled my way back to my house upset with myself. I didn’t finish the run. I remembered coming inside and feeling disappointed, I cried to my husband saying that there was no way I could run a half-marathon this year. I remember saying, “I can’t even run 5 miles! How am I going to run over 13?!” He told me to stay positive and to keep training and I’d be able to do it.
I didn’t quite believe him at that point. I was worried my hip pain would come back. See, I had terrible hip pain last year, to the point where it began waking me up in the middle of the night. I underwent 3-4 months of physical therapy for it and, with the help of the therapists at Select PT, I slowly gained my strength back and my pain subsided.
I was really concerned that that 5-mile day was an indicator of how my future long runs would go. But, I was wrong. In fact, I felt myself getting stronger, faster, and I felt better than I could ever remember feeling.
However, a few weeks ago, I got sidelined from another injury. I was in the midst of an 11-mile long run on a Sunday morning when I felt pain in my foot. It was a sharp pain, one that I hadn’t felt before, and I tried to push through it. I was only 7 miles in when I felt the pain, and by 8 1/2 miles, I had to call my mother-in-law and ask her to come and pick me up. I was limping and crying in pain. I still don’t know how I injured myself, truthfully. All I remember was the pain was severe.
I took a week and a half off from running after that, and that was the hardest thing to do because I knew my race was coming up quickly. I knew I only had a few weeks left of training. But I did it because I had to listen to my body (and my husband convinced/made me).
I was so worried I would get out of shape in that week and a half off. However, fast forward to today, and I ran 13.5 miles as my last long run before my race next Sunday. 13.5 miles! The farthest I have ever run, and I did it despite the setbacks I occurred with training. That is a great, indescribable feeling. Not only that, but I came in with a half-marathon time of 1:59:31 when my half-marathon time in 2017 was about 2 hours and 18 minutes or so. I crushed it.
I’m hoping all of the hard work with this training will pay off next weekend. I’m really looking forward to my race, and, if I’m being honest, giving my body a break from running all the time and cross-train instead.
So, despite having a breakdown a few months ago and wondering if I’d be able to run a half-marathon again, I proved myself wrong by running more than a half-marathon and crushing my time from my last race. What an incredible feeling!
Have you ever trained for any race, whether it was a 5k or a marathon or anything in between? Did you ever notice how much you were improving or did you only notice when you looked back at your training regiment? Let me know in the comments below.
Until next time,
Emily
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