Solutions

Last night I kept thinking to myself that I wanted to do more than 1 mile today. I was tempted to nix the warm up and cool down miles and run them instead. I know that for my hip doing short runs is important to ease back into running. After I talked myself out of extending today’s run, I checked the weather. It said snow—yuck! I went to bed and luckily it was not snowing or raining when I woke up. I laced up my shoes and was out the door for about 10 seconds when I realized that I forgot to stretch which was really not smart. Since I have class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings I felt rushed and decided to just forget it and continued on my way. I got stopped at several lights and was inhaling bus fumes from the millions of buses that drove by. Then I started to run and felt really nauseous. No fun at all! I just powered through my single mile because I wanted it to be over so badly (so much for wanting to run 3). Then I walked a mile back home again getting stuck at several lights. I felt rushed because of class, even though I had plenty of time and I skipped my post-run stretch too.

Here are my splits:

Mile 1: 15:37

Mile 2: 8:34

Mile 3: 16:07

During my run, I honestly doubted myself for the first time since the crazy idea of running a half marathon popped into my head. But, instead of letting this doubt get the best of me, I’ve decided to come up with some positive solutions:

1. Find a different route for my weekday runs. I ran the same route as Sunday, and over the weekend the streets of Bethlehem are definitely less crowded than on a Tuesday morning at 7:30 am when everyone is on their commute to work.

2. Remember to stretch!!! It may be a pain to do it, but I’ll be in more pain if I don’t stretch.

3. Don’t skip out on the mile warm up and cool down. For now. This is important while I’m getting back into the swing of things and even though I didn’t end up skipping it, I definitely considered it.
4. Wake up earlier. I like to give myself a ton of time in the morning and hopefully this will help me to feel less rushed.

5. Remember why I’m doing this. Dad <3

December 2007, Carmines for our annual NYC trip

Anyway, even though this morning didn’t go so great I’m just going to move forward and get excited for Thursday’s run. I think I’ll go over the bridge to the north side. Tomorrow’s cross training is Wonderful Wintry Women’s Workout Wednesday (or the 5 W’s) with one of my friends who just joined the gym!

--Melissa