The Struggle is Real

This was the Runner's World quote today.  Ugh.  Sometimes these drive me bonkers.

The last few weeks have been busy.  We had a lot of social commitments, family commitments, and of course, gearing up for school.  In our house, August is a rough month of anxiety for my daughter.  I have struggled with sleep.

I still was getting runs in, as you know if you follow my weekly training recaps or my Instagram. They weren't ideal, and my legs always felt tired, but I was having some punctuation of a good runs. Good runs are becoming the anomaly in my training instead of the norm.  That seems strange.

There are many ways to define a "good" run.  For me, a "good" run is one that first and foremost feels good.  It may not be easy but my body responds to the push I give it.  They have nothing to do with pace.  I can have a good run running 8:45/mile pace and one at 6:30/mile pace.

I keep pushing and pushing and my body is just not having it.  Everything hurts and feels very sluggish.  On every run.

I skipped running yesterday because I was so tired.  So tired that I went to bed at 6:30.  My kids barely fell asleep before I did.  I tried reading my book for a while, but the words were swirling together on the page so I reluctantly gave up and promptly fell asleep.

I woke at 3AM to the sound of my son getting out of bed, walking to our bathroom, turning on the light, and peeing.

Then I tossed and turned.  Tried deep breathing but could not get my breath to be slow and even and deep.  Eventually I fell back asleep.

This morning I got out of bed at my 5 AM alarm not because I wanted to but because I felt guilty that I had missed my run yesterday.

I started running and my legs were just screaming.  I chalked it up to mile 1, always a toughie.  My mile one beeped in at just over 8 min/mile.  I continued on and it was taking so much effort to run "easy".  My second mile beeped in at 8:47/mile.  I didn't feel great.  I decided that I needed to make up for the tempo run that I missed yesterday, come hell or high water.

I started running, fast, and immediately was huffing and puffing.  I got to the 0.75 mile mark and stopped.  I was at a 6:49/mile pace.  5 second slower than my goal half marathon pace.  I regained my breath and continued.  UGH.  Such a struggle.  My mile beeped in at 7:00.

I continued the fight for another 0.25 miles and then just gave up.  Clearly my body wasn't having this.

I tried to continue the shuffle/slow pace run and yet it was so so hard.  I ended up shutting my Garmin off and walking the rest of the way home (~0.6 miles).

I don't think I can keep pushing myself for 9 more weeks on this plan.  I know that I am supposed to be tired - that cumulative fatigue is the hallmark of the Hanson plan.  At some point I think I crossed a line into just fatigue.  I never felt like this during my marathon training.

I don't have any next steps.  I am just at a point where I am thinking long and hard about them.