August 1st, 2010 – 3.67 Mile Run

The continued prayer is, “Lord keep me focused. Keep my mind stayed on You. Help me to bring You praise. I know You believe in me. Please help me in my unbelief. Amen.”

Tonight’s run was after a very busy weekend. We had people over yesterday. Just a group of good friends. One of those things where it had just been too long. We blew up the kiddie pool and fired up the grill and asked everyone to bring something fun to eat. We got the house clean (enough) and had a great time. Today we skipped church [blush] and went to visit a lady with whom I went to high school and went swimming at her house. Good times.

It felt good to be busy but I was I still having a LOT of tenderness in my right AT. Enough to make me really consider skipping this run. However, July was a really bad month for fitness for me. I ran about 36 miles all month and there were far too many days when I could have run but didn’t. Then there was that 6 day stretch when Chris was out of town so I only got to run once during that whole time.

I am determined that August should be a better month, so I couldn’t allow myself to start the month off with excuses. So after a lovely, but tiring visit with friends, I strapped on the Asics, grabbed my current issue of Runner’s World Magazine and went to the bathroom. Yes, the bathroom! I decided I would sit, until something happened. Either I would wait for the 2 lbs of pineapple I’d eaten at the pool to do its job and fight its way out of my system, find an article that would inspire me to actually get out the door since I already had the Asics on, or both!

Turned out, the pineapple did its job brilliantly and there was a great article in Runner's World about “easy day” training. It extolled the virtues of the easy day training session, saying it was essential to get those rest days in and if you were one of those people who just couldn’t sit on the couch and do nothing, to really take your workout down quite a few notches and take it really easy. It said to add as many as 2 minutes to your race day pace! I felt like I could do that with no trouble at all!

So I set out, without the dog, on something I could only call a glorified stroll. It was little more than a power walk. Some wouldn’t even call it that. I mean, I was going INSANELY slow, even for me! My average rate was a 15 min mile. You can walk a mile in 15 minutes most days.

At about the .75 mile mark, I was considering making it the 6.5 mile route, as long as I kept up this pace. Then I had to tell myself, “No… You are injured. If you really mess up your AT, you might not be fit for Race Day. So just praise the Lord you are out here now and take Sarah for a short walk when you get home if you really feel like you haven’t done enough”. So I maintained this ridiculous pace and turned the corner for the regular ole 3.5 mile route.

At about the 2 mile mark, I was really feeling terrible and trying to adjust my stride to relieve the pressure on my AT and in so doing, I think I was putting pressure on my hips, so this run was mostly about getting my form and footfall right. From mile 2 to mile 3 it was adjustments, mental notes and mental snapshots.

When I was turning down the home stretch with about half a mile left to go, I turned on Christine Aguilera’s “Fighter” and just ran it out. Not hard, but with determination.

Was it even worth it to post this run? Maybe not…. But even a bad workout is better than no workout and I think, when I wake up tomorrow, I will be very glad that I did it this way. Certainly gladder than if I’d run it too hard and had to stop and confess myself defeated and immensely gladder than if I’d skipped it all together. Besides, this was really good practice in case I have to do the race injured. But let us pray against that.