Sunday, March 24, 2013

Y'all are my mental fuel

Usually it takes me about 3-4 days after a full marathon to get back to running again.  Once I stop hobbling around like a peg-legged pirate and am able to use the bathroom sans handicap bar, I figure I am good to go with running.  Sometimes it is easy and I feel great to get going again.  Other times I wonder why I am jumping back into it so soon again.

This go 'round I had no choice but to wait until a week after the race.  The flu took me out like a bulldozer about 36 hours after I raced.  For 4 miserable days, I laid in bed accomplishing nothing except commenting on each and every bloop.  I went to work yesterday and was about 2 hours in before I was like, wow, I still feel like someone knocked the wind out of my sails.  Fortunately, by the end of the night, I felt much better and was happy that I was starting to feel normal again.

This morning I was determined to run.  Any distance.  Just as long as I didn't have a goose egg on the week, I'd feel better.  It was rainy and cold so I played it smart and ran on the TM.  1 mile turned into 2 and I ended with 5 easy miles.  It felt fantastic while I was running!  When I finished and started walking around the house, I noticed my ankle was feeling wonky.  I won't run again until Tuesday, so I'm hoping this is just a casualty of a marathon-followed-by-a-week-off. 

Now, I get to enjoy a little reprieve and run for fun until I decide when my next will be.  I don't know if I will ever be the type of runner that just constantly has a race on the docket.  I like the idea of it and wish that I had the weekend time and money to do it, but I also just enjoy the freedom of running just to run.  It's great to have the goal and camaraderie of racing (I mean, duh, the camaraderie is an added bonus of blogging), but not having a training schedule to adhere to is nice as well.  Besides, I can live vicariously through other runners and then go frolic around in the woods using their inspirational stories as mental fuel.

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