It’s time to start training again. After a year plagued with pregnancy, broken
bones, and relocation, it is time to get back to it. I haven’t trained . . . I mean really trained
. . . in about 18 months and Chicago Marathon is looming a mere 4 months down
the road. Sure I’ve been running. Occasionally.
But right now, I need to train. Consistently.
Maintaining consistency is the hardest part of running these days.
For the past couple of months, my runs have been
placeholders. I show up at club and go
for a run, but don’t always do the workout.
I’m trying to keep up the routine of running, even if I’m not doing all
the work. On Thursday mornings, the
alarm goes off at 4 a.m. so I can get a run in before Chris leaves for
work. I both love and hate these early
morning runs. 4 a.m. frigging sucks. But after peeling myself out of bed, it’s not
so bad. 5 minutes into the run, I’m in a
good place. Getting back home at 7 a.m.
with 8 miles under my belt is pure elation.
It makes for a very good day.
What I learned in my placeholder runs is that everything needs
to be planned if running is going to fit into my life. I've found 3 very specific times in my week
that work for running: Monday night with
the club, Thursdays crazy early, and Saturday morning with the club again for
longer miles. I have reasons that
conflict with every other time you might suggest. Go ahead.
Test me. When I say everything
has to be planned, I am not kidding. On
Mondays, I bring my running clothes to work, I bring an extra snack to fuel up
before club, I bring an extra set of bottles with my breast pump because yes, I
am still a nursing mother. If I drop the
ball on Monday morning, there goes my Monday night run and I’m out of luck
until Thursday. Same holds true if I
stay up late on Wednesday nights. 4 a.m.
comes awfully quick.
It’s been about two weeks since I’ve been out on a run. I’ve been tied up with packing and moving. (On a side note, if you can avoid moving when
you have small children, I recommend it. We can’t keep up with Daughter’s pace
of unpacking and Son puts everything he can reach into his mouth! Bad combination.) Up until that point, I was doing a fairly
good job juggling work, kids, and running.
The monkey wrench of moving tripped me up, though. Something had to fall and it wasn’t going to
be my awesome job or my loving family.
Now that we’re a little settled in our new digs, I’m ready to start
fresh again. Chicago Marathon is coming
up and I’m eager to take on this challenge.
However, training will look very different this time around than it did
for my previous 3 marathons. Training is
more than running. Every decision I can
make to improve my performance at Chicago will be weighed carefully. Little things qualify for training, like how
much water I drink. Choosing
to skip dessert – that’s training. Getting
to bed a decent hour, getting the dishes washed and keeping the house clean to
make life easier on the rest of my family when I’m out running, being present when
I’m with my kids to alleviate the inevitable guilt I feel while I’m away. This is all training. It’s a new kind of training. I haven’t perfected it yet. It’s pretty damn hard, really. But it’s still the beginning. I want all these things in my life and I’m
ready to try. What else is there to
do?
I didn’t run a single step today. But I did fill up my water bottle 6 times. I got a 3 minute ab workout in before
work. I skipped dessert. I did the dishes. I got a good amount of walking in. I gave Daughter a bath and had great
conversations with her. I crawled around
with Son on the floor and giggled with him.
Add it all up and it was a very good day of training.
