Marathon Training Update: Mistakes Were Made

I'll let you judge for yourself.

Green = Completed Run

Blue = Completed Run plus at least 1 mile

Yellow= Ran but less than planned miles

Red = Did not run

Hal Higdon training plan in excel for easy tracking.

This is week 12 of my marathon training. I'm looking at it as crunch time. The last weekend in April is the 20 mile long run and after that my runs taper to lower millage. While I've been doing OK with at least getting in a long run on the weekends, I'm missing the mileage mark and I'm starting to get nervous. I have not broken through the 14 mile barrier, let alone 15. Running 15 miles is physically hard, but soon it is going to be mentally hard as well.

What Happened?

I hit the "struggle bus" hard after the Hampton Half. My ability to self motivate out the door to run has fallen apart. I may have figured out why.

I've been losing weight with training, which is to be expected, but I'm not really one to celebrate weight loss. With the weight loss comes lack of reserves, and possible longer recovery times. I haven't been doing a good job of long run recovery for food or hydration. I stopped most of my strength training aside from occasional planks and squats.

Then I made a huge mistake the last weekend of March. After I ran 10 hard miles on busy roads with rolling hills, I barely ate any food. Irrational fears can make a mess of life. I have an irrational fear of vomiting. Bad enough that I honestly hesitated about having children because I knew pregnancy was a risk factor, labor was a risk factor and then there was children. Back to the long run, as I'm lying on the floor with my legs up a wall draining, I asked my older son, where is my younger son. He responds oh so casually, oh he threw up. The best we can guess he ate way too many pancakes at breakfast. But I didn't know that then, I could only guess. The other option was tummy bug. My irrational fear response to a tummy bug(which I do not recommend to anyone) is to fast for 48+ hours during the incubation period. The irrational thought that if my system is at rest and empty, I won't throw up. It has worked well in my life except the one time I didn't wait long enough.

Do you see what went wrong? I ran 10 miles, and then I immediately started fasting for two and half days. Fasting meant I ate less than 500 calories a day. This problem made worse because how do you tell the difference between sour tummy from stress, food sensitives, being empty or viral? Needless to say I have no energy to run. I did start eating normally again on Wednesday and Thursday but opted to continue resting before I attempted a long run on Saturday.

Autumn, a friends guide dog(off duty) decided I needed snuggles.

I did succeed 13.5 miles on Sunday, but I pushed the speed to much in the beginning and strained a few muscles. I'm sure those muscles would be uninjured if I had properly taken care of myself the weekend before. Thankfully it's not bad just means running may be a bit painful as I heal, but it did give me the kick in the butt to start working on my strength training again.

This weeks goals is to accomplish each planned run and break the 15 mile barrier on Sunday with my long run. To help with the long run, I've signed up to run the Nashua Soup Kitchen 10k and then after continue running with many of my local friends.

Thoughts? Insights? Support? All would be appreciated.