Marathon Meltdown

Last weekend I had a marathon meltdown.  It all started Thursday when I REALLY didn't want to go for my run and wanted to do Crossfit instead, and worsened Friday when I forced myself to run a workout and my hamstring started tightening up, making me a little worried about the long weekend run.  The pinnacle was Saturday night, when, in the midst of stressing out about how the heck I was going to get in 13 miles before going to Boston for the day and speak at a camp at night,  I stated to Geoff that "running more than an hour right now seems pointless and is doing me more harm than good", and he replied, "Well then, don't do it!"

His advice was so simple, and so on point, that if I had a rational, non-obsessive runner mind, my reaction would have been "Yeah, you are right!" and ended it would have ended there...

But instead, it took mulling it over on a 13 mile run with a group of my running girlfriends at 6:30 in the morning to convince me that not running a marathon is "ok".  I  am very thankful for these rational and supportive people in my life.  

When it comes down to it, I am being ridiculous in my expectations: take on Crossfit, row my boat, do my yoga, run a marathon.  The whole point of starting Crossfit in the first place was to minimize training time and learn how to take care of myself a little better.  Instead, I just added it to my exercise "to do list".  Last week I felt burnt out, injury prone, and dreaded my workouts, and that's no way to carry out a training plan!

So, I am still going to use a Crossfit endurance training plan, but rather than jumping in to the longest distance I've ever run, I'll pull in the reigns and start with a more conservative approach with a 5k cross  country season.  This will actually give me the chance to practice some low volume, high intensity training, and allow me to progress in to a Crossfit endurance plan rather than jumping in full force like my usual self.  If I really want to figure out if this program "works", my gut tells me I need to be patient, give myself a year or so to get used to it, and THEN maybe think about some pr's and a marathon training schedule.

But for this season, Brian Mackenzie's short interval/long interval/time trial or tempo plan will be my plan to prep for cross country...with NO deviations! And maybe, just MAYBE after that I'll go for a race a little bit longer :-) For the next few weeks, I will progress from 3-5 hard endurance workouts (3 run/2 row), only adding when I can handle it.

Lastly, per Geoff's orders, I must up my yoga days/days off from one to two per week if I am to train at this higher intensity.  I'm not sure his rhyme or reason, but he always seems to be right. So, I'm going to listen!