Well. What a whirlwind it’s been. In the past 2 and a half weeks the following has happened:

1. I sprained my ankle (duh)
2. I decided to move out of NYC
3. I had to find someone to take over my name on the lease
4. I decided to move into my cousin’s house in Greenwich, CT
5. I had to move out of NYC and into CT
6. I had to help Chris move out his apt in Stamford, and into his parents’ house in Trumbull
7. Work is wild
8. I have not been running

So that’s that.

I did take one week off from running because of my ankle. Fair. The second week was taken off because of moving madness, which never seemed to end. Less than desirable. Then not doing the long run this past weekend was completely my fault…I was planning on doing it Saturday, but then I ran out of daylight, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to run the winding backroads of Old Greenwich with no light…that’s just not safe.

SO I did do a 50 minute run on Sunday. But then I took Monday and Tuesday off because I was at work late. WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?! Can someone please ingrain it into my peapod of a brain that the marathon is only a month away?!?

Anyway. It’s going to be fine. I’ve started up again, and I know I can’t stray from the training this time…I just can’t afford it. The motivation has been a combination of having the Chicago Marathon coming up this weekend and hearing about so many people doing it…and also the fact that I have already raised $780 for Lourdes Camp…there’s no way I can turn back now. I’ve put too much into it at this point to lose commitment.

I took an hour Wednesday night to reassess and readjust my training plan. I should be coming into another down-mileage week before the final mileage increase and then eventual taper…but I obviously don’t need to down my mileage since I just took 2 weeks completely off. So I’m scrapping the down week and plummeting through with gradual mileage increase, similar to what I should have been doing while I was taking time off.

I decided I only wanted to miss one long run because of my ankle injury, and I would have to squeeze in some serious running over the next couple of weeks to get back on track. SOOO, in a nutshell, the long run that I was supposed to do last weekend—16 miles—was done last night. This way, I’m only missing one 16 miler!

I commend you if you’ve read this much of my posting, since I’ve been babbling on about training. Now I’m going to babble a bit about how yesterday’s 16 mile run SUCKED and I thought I was going to die. 🙂

Welp. Who’dve guessed that sitting on your butt for 2.5 weeks makes you out of shape?

I asked to leave work early-around 5pm-because I knew I’d be running for 2 and half hours. I ran a mile to Central Park from my gym on 43rd St, did 2 loops around the park (6 miles each), a mile back to the gym, and then the last 2 miles on the treadmill. The mile to CP and then the first 6 miles were great. I felt awesome and was cruising on miles 6-7. Started getting a little achy and had some ankle pains once I got up to around 8-9 miles. Then as I was nearing mile 12, I couldn’t find my way out of the Park (I’m an idiot) so I ended up getting semi-lost, then found a different entrance than the one I used to get into the park. Whatever. By the time I made it to the gym, I was pretty tired, but I sucked down some Gu, drank some water, and finished up the final 2 miles on the treadmill. I think maybe I should have slowed the machine down, because I was running sub 8:30 miles…but at that point, I just wanted to be DONE with the run.

Sweat kept dripping into my eyes and they BURNED, and I really thought that I might have another allergy blow-up (last time my eyes were burning on a run, I had to be whisked away to the ER because of my exercise-induced anaphalyxis)……..BUT luck was on my side, because I was fine, besides the fact that my legs absolutely ached and I think I pulled my right calf muscle.

So maybe I shouldn’t have jumped back into my training with a 16 mile run since I can barely walk today…or maybe I just shouldn’t have run so fast. (My pacing was semi-quick…I did the first 14 in sub 2:10, and I’m not sure how much of that was from getting lost, and then the last two in sub 8:30, as I mentioned…) BUT, regardless, the run gave me confidence to jump back into it and it got my motivation back up.

I can’t lose sight of the marathon in November…now I just need to discover WHY I’m doing it. I haven’t put a finger on my reasoning yet. I’ll figure it out…and I think once I do, I’ll be much more passionate about my training. For now, I’m scraping by with the bare minimum, which is very unlike me.