Body knows best
Training for a marathon takes a lot…of everything. It takes a lot of miles on the road, a lot of hours stretching and lifting to support those muscles, a lot of ice for post-run recovery, a lot of oatmeal and peanut butter (my favorite pre-run breakfast) and a lot of time. A combination of all of these seem to have caught up to me this week. After returning from St. John, I have been pretty determined, working out almost everyday for the last 2 weeks. In the meantime, I also returned to real life, where I have a job, volunteer, fundraise for the marathon and try to maintain some kind of social life.
Somewhere in that list, I try to sleep each day. But I admit, it is never the priority it should be. So I should not have been too surprised when I woke up on Thursday at 7:00am with zero recollection of my 5:00 alarm ever going off. After initially being annoyed with myself, I realized this was my body’s way of yelling at me after it had tried to tell me for the last few days that I could not keep up my current schedule. If I was not going to get to bed early enough, eventually my body was just not going to wake up when I wanted.
Like most runner’s, I’m compliant with a training schedule, and a missed run can, in the moment, seem catastrophic. However, just as I trust my body to get me through 26.2 miles, I also need to trust it when it tells me to take better care of myself.
My disappointment in my missed run earlier in the week was quickly overshadowed by a very successful 18 miler on Saturday. After struggling through my last 2 long runs, I was nervous how I might survive my longest training run thus far. But it was great! I felt strong the entire run, both physically and mentally. Now, whether or not I would have felt this good if I had not missed my run the Thursday before, I will not know. But what I do know is that missing that run did not seem to negatively affect me.
My goal for the next 7 weeks is to make getting the rest I need a priority, to recover from all the work my body is doing these days. And while the plan is of course to stick to the training plan during that time, I will try to listen to my body more, so next time it does not need to yell to be heard.
