And Then When It All Falls Apart....

Nothing makes you appreciate the great runs like a REALLY, REALLY BAD one. (Did I mention it was REALLY bad?) I knew the minute I titled last weeks' post "When Things Come Together" that today's title was in my near future. That's just how the runner's life works.

Everything fell apart on Saturday's 12-miler that wound up being 13 miles. It was pathetic. After 5.5 miles, I took walk breaks CONSTANTLY. My hips hurt. My knees hurt. I was nauseated. I was exhausted. (And I didn't even go out too fast or anything.) I had a bad attitude. I guess it was good for my training group to see that everyone has a bad day from time to time. (Many of them ROCKED their first 12-mile run! I was so happy for them despite my own misery!)

I have many REASONS/EXCUSES as to why the run was so bad:

• First, I set myself up for failure by running stupidly all week. By "stupidly," I mean I did speed intervals with people from my training groups on Monday and Wednesday, then a tempo run on Thursday. Instead of taking a rest day on Friday, I ran 2.5 more miles. Oh, and to add a dash of crazy in there, I did all those runs in OLD shoes. In an effort to save money, I decided to save my good shoes for the marathon and do my training runs in my old shoes. I need to just pay the $85 that Road Runner Sports has my New Balance 1225's on sale for!

• I also got lazy with my diet this week. I skimped on protein and iron and fresh produce. I ate junk.

• I forgot to make sleep a priority and fell into my old habit of staying up too late.

• It was a SERIOUSLY hilly course. Up and down. Up and down. For 13 miles.
  

• I got a flu shot on Friday. Could that have anything to do with it?
  

After finishing the first 11 miles, I went back out to find the last few runners from my group to make sure they were ok. (Everyone else had finished.) I continued to run/walk. I found the last runner 1 mile out and ran her in, which is how my 12 became 13. Twelve horrible miles, thirteen horrible miles---what's the difference?

By the end I felt like I had been hit by a truck. Definitely flu-ish, but it's hard to go to the doctor and say, "I'm having body aches. Oh, incidentally, I ran 13 miles before I came here." So I went home and climbed under the covers. After an hour of rest, I still felt pretty bad.

I developed a terrible headache and noticed my upper teeth hurt as I was eating lunch and dinner. Finally, at 7:00 p.m., I went to the doctor. Turns out I had a sinus infection. I got some Augmentin, and I feel much better.

So, what caused the REALLY, REALLY bad run? Probably a number of things. Hopefully the next long one will go better----especially since it's the Music City Half Marathon next Sunday!

I was going to treat it like a training run and do 3 before and 4 after for my first 20-miler. However, now I think I'm going to run 1 mile before to warm up, 13 during, and 4 after for a total of 18 instead of 20. That's going to put me down to only 2 20's before the marathon (instead of the 3 I'd planned), but I'm ok with that. I'd rather be able to run the race as a RACE than a training run since I paid $50!