16 November 2005

I'm pissed!!!!

I've been feeling very discouraged about my marathon training for a couple of weeks and I was actually very close to not doing the marathon. I THOUGHT my trouble was due to my intestinal problems and ankle injuries and that's what was bringing me down. I was thinking that I really may not be ready for the marathon in 25 days and I was starting to get concerned.

I just decided to do some analysis of my running/training over the past year and try and figure out what happened and should I drop out of the marathon. Well, that's when I got pissed.

Earlier this year I was running between a 10 and 12 minute mile in all my races (and there were tons this year). Once I started training with this marathon group in September my pace increased to 14/mpm. I tried to put it down to longer races/training runs but a 1/2 marathon I did in June (while I was injured) was faster then my 1/2 2 weeks ago. I let this so called expert coach put me in a slower training group. And now that I've been training slower I'm running much slower. This totally sucks. When we started I thought this group was too slow for me but I rationalized it my thinking, well, if I can do it this slow I can do it faster. But now looking at my race results lately I see exactly what this slow training has done. God, this is a perfect example of how your training affects your racing.

Now, I have to decide what to do. Do I continue the next few weeks with this group and have a horrible marathon?? Or, should I just go back to my own training and try to do the best I can with the time I have left??? I have a turkey trot next Thursday. I could use the next week to train on my own and then see how I do in that 10 miler. I think I'm overall in pretty good shape. If I could get some good training runs in at my 10-11 mpm pace I could probably pull off a half way decent marathon. My initial goal was to break 5 hours, that probably won't happen but I could prevent it from taking 7 to complete.

I'm so pissed. I trusted this asshole. He assured me this was the best way to train and that it would work. But because I'm not a skinny minny he assumed that I couldn't run very fast. Okay, I can't, but I can run faster than these folks. I'm pissed. Here I am 25 days out and I have to revamp my entire training schedule. I'm pissed!!!!!!

3 comments:

La said...

OK, first, you're just suffering from normal pre-race stress and self-doubt (it happens to all of us). Doing long runs slower is good, but only if you also do some of your shorter runs faster. Have you done your last 20-miler yet? If so, you're entering your taper and should be working on "race craft", which includes doing some tempo runs at about 30 seconds faster per mile than your marathon goal pace. Tempo runs should be from 5-7 miles in total (including warm-up and cool down miles). Breathe, refocus and you'll be fine!

Flo said...

Thanks La for "talking me down." I was a little freaked this afternoon. I went for my group run tonight and ran faster than normal and it felt awesome!! I think I'll be okay....

Bolder said...

i'm with la... you've built out this big engine... now, you have the opp to turbo-charge it, ... think turbo-charged V8... if you hadn't built out the big block engine... you'd be lookin' at a turbo-charged 4 banger... you've done the work, now reap the benefit!

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