I think week four was the worst, in a general sense. Two of the seven
days were terrible runs, but the bright side is I totally learned a
lesson. Apparently it was an important one, because I made the same
mistake twice. I think God might have been telling me something here?
On
day four, which was a short run, I only ran 3.7km in a half hour. Not a
bad distance, mind you, but I felt like crap at the end. On my way back
home I was extremely thirsty, and when I got home my head was pounding
and I felt dizzy. Oh and my knee was killing me. "Lesson learned!", I
wrote in my journal...ha!
Fast forward to Saturday, which was my
long run day. My goal was 7km. In the morning Finn and I went to the
mall, I got a Slurpee, then we went to the park and played. Later on
that evening Chris and I were going on a dinner and a movie date, so I
was pretty excited for the day ahead. It was a great day - everyone was in a good mood, there was warm sun, and it being Saturday just made the day even
better. One o'clock rolled around and it was time for my run.
MISTAKE!
Do you know how warm it was outside? About 25 degrees, cloudless sky...just pure sun. The section of
the park I jogged in had little shade at that time. I hardly drank any
water and I nicely polished off that Slurpee about an hour previous.
What was I thinking? After 25 minutes I couldn't go on. I had to pee, I
wanted to crap my pants, my stomach was hurting, it was hot and I was
sweating a tonne...need I go on? I stopped running and sat on a park
bench in the shade to catch my breath. I started to cry. Basically,
every good feeling I had from last week's 6km success was completely
deflated.
I walked home, dragged myself through the door, climbed
(quite literally) up the stairs and sat down across from Chris. I broke
down.
Tears. Sniffles. Ugly cry face. Shrill voice as I try to explain
why I'm blubbering like a baby. I cried to him about what a failure that
was, and I began to doubt my ability to do this.
How am I going to run 21 kilometres if I can't run 7? How am I going to do this? Chris assured me that it was just a bad run, that I shouldn't have ran in the heat of the day
(concept!)
and I definitely should not have had that Slurpee. I should have ate
better and drank more water. He was right, and THIS time I learned the
lesson:
what I put in myself will directly and faithfully affect the way I function.
Honestly I am glad I learned it the hard way, because now I know and I
take more care of what I eat and how much water I drink, especially on
long run days. I don't ever want to feel like that again, if I can help
it...
Thank God for new days and new weeks. Whew!
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