This morning I literally was back on the track for the first time in quite awhile. Last week John Ball gave me a clean bill of health, which was great news, and also meant that apparently taking a week off the legs was indeed the final thing we needed to get “the situation” cleared up. However, it doesn’t mean that I can suddenly run well again after 3 months of compromised run training.
So after a week off and a week of free choice/ birthday smashfests, Coach and I finally got to have a meeting last night and get to work on the plan to get my run legs back under me.
It began with a Tuesday train-til-8PM day and a track session this morning on the local high school track; I even snapped that lovely crackberry photo for you! Running track at a time like this is never really fun; it just hurts and the hurt isn’t rewarded with fast (relatively speaking, of course) times.
I find it tough to motivate and push through this phase, and this morning was no different.
This is what got me through:
- Breaking the set up into manageable increments. I had 15 reps, but took them just 5 at a time. I could wrap my head around five.
- Imaginary training partners. Track sessions are 100x better with friends, and as I didn’t actually have any training partners today, I convinced myself that the local age group athletes and coach whom I ran into on the track were in fact my coach and training partners. Weird, I know—but it helped to keep my effort honest.
- Focusing on doing the best I could for today. That’s all I could ask of myself; I just had to put some times on the board to start, and next week I work on bettering them.
- Running with the music. The ipod never fails. Plus I stole Maiki’s, and he actually has a live recording of our USC Trojan Marching Band playing the fight song on there. Amazing.
And with that, I was back on track.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Glad to hear things are back in order with the situation.
I hope you didn’t scare those poor young boys with your dying animal noises! LOL
Hey Hillary! Yup…breaking up sets is the only way I usually get through them. Many small amounts is much better than looking at the BIG picture all at once. Love the “Focusing on doing the best I could for today.” So totally true. Each day is so different, and the really bad training days/sessions make the really good ones that much sweeter. Plus putting time in over and over again should lead right where you want to me. I’ve learned to embrace patience, as it seems it tends to bring good things in the long run. Not always right away! Keep up the great work, and glad to hear that you a clean bill of health!
Focusing on doing the best I could for today.
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you learned this from me. i’m queen of this.
my mindset: doing anything beats doing nothing.
peggy
Really happy for you that you are back on track, very soon you’ll be on top running form as well. You’ll be glad to hear that I also invent imaginary friends during some of my solo sessions. I even talk to myself which is abit worrying……anything to get me through whatever I’m doing.
As I’ve said to some of my friends recently ” the trick to training long is to ensure you like your own company”