Physical Training

This is a long overdue post about my training for the half marathon.  If you haven’t read about the decision to run, you can read about it here.  There has been actually two types of training going on … physical & spiritual.  I’m going to focus on the physical as it’s honestly easier to process.

So I have been running for the past 6 weeks or so.… well, if that’s what you call it … there are times I see turtles and snails pass me.  This has all been to get my running up to a level to actually train for the marathon.  My goal has been to get to 4 miles consistent by the 24th of July as the 26th will be week 1 of the 12 week official training plan for the race.  The race is on Saturday, October 16th.

I started off run/walking around 2.5 miles.  We have a park at the end of our road that has a .62 mile walking path around some ball fields which is about a mile away.  We also have a greenway system that has some trails in the woods that have been a life saver.  Those are much hillier than just doing the walking path around the ball fields but the shade has been so needed.  It has been HOTHOTHOT in Tennessee this year.  Like crazy hot.  Mid to upper 90’s plus humidity has put heat indexes in triple digits many days.  I have been running 3 times a week. I usually run on Tuesday/Thursday afternoons and then Saturday mornings … I’m going to probably add Mondays to the runs once training officially starts.  The Tuesday/Thursday runs are usually in the dead of heat around 5pm because if I don’t do it right after work, I won’t go until 9pm or so and that’s just not ideal with getting up at 5:15am.  And, I’m usually pushing Silas on those days.  It’s amazing what 25 pounds of Ethiopian can do to your running.

OK, fast forward to last Saturday … I ran about 6 miles with about 1/2 mile of that walking!  My goal for this Saturday is 7 miles.  We will be heading to Indiana the following weekend for Amber’s class reunion so I have a feeling that week’s long run will be shorter … but I’m hoping for 5 miles to ensure I stay above the 4 mile long runs the first 2 weeks of the training plan.  The official training plan will start the week after we get back from Indiana.

A couple weeks into running, I started having some pretty good pain in my big toe joint on the top of my foot.  In the past, I’ve had it be sore but nothing like what was happening.  I decided to go get some xrays to see what I was dealing with.  The xray showed that the joint doesn’t have much cushion between it.  There is some bone on bone happening along with a little bone spur.  Nothing to really do for it.  I will probably get arthritis in it earlier in life.  But praise God … it really hasn’t bothered me much in my runs in the past couple of weeks.  At the end of the long run last week, it started hurting but that’s also the farthest I’ve gone.  I’m praying that it will continue to not be a big issue through the training.

If you remember, I had a goal of losing about 30 pounds through this process.  Unfortunately, I have not lost much at all.  A little disappointed.  OK, downright frustrating.  I was justifying what I was eating by thinking that I’m running, my metabolism is faster, and I can eat that (cookie, ice cream, whatever).  It’s just so easy to eat that cookie when they’re sitting there at work just begging you to eat them. Well, I have made a decision of NO MORE COOKIES at work.  I held strong on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Mind over matter.

Talking about mind … so much of running is mental.  I will get to a point while running where I just ‘think’ that it’s time to quit even though my breathing is ok and my legs are alright.  I have to fight that desire to stop and continue on.  The big decision is making the plan of how long I’m going to run and plotting out the course and holding true to that.  Again, mind over matter.

OK, that summarizes the physical training side of things.  Next post will be how all this ties to the spiritual training side of this training … still trying to wrap my head around all that.  But a little on that … you know how when you follow God on something and you feel all righteous?  You expect it’s going to be smooth sailing because you heard God’s invitation.  OK, God, I got it.  Make my running path downhill both ways.  60 and mostly sunny.  Spray a little cool mist every now and again.  Do you do that or is that just me?  The reality is that we’re not promised anything like that.  Actually, if we look at Scripture, Jesus followers suffered more than any of us would care to.  But yet we know they were walking from invitation to invitation.  So why do we think the road will be easy???

OK, can’t leave you without a pic of Silas … here’s one of momma and him playing one night last week…