Remember when I ran 5 half marathons in 5 days?
Remember how hard I trained for months?
Well, here’s a news flash:
No matter how trained you were 7 months ago, if you stop running that kind of mileage, you WILL lose endurance.
In 8 days, I am running the Richmond Half Marathon. I am only about 10% undertrained for that, so I’m not too worried about that day. But remember my brilliant idea? In order to hit 13 half marathons in 2013, I decided to run back to back halves.
My thought at the time was, I’ve done 5, how bad can 2 be?
I wish someone had slapped me. Ahem.
So, I ran 10 pretty decent miles on Wednesday. My foot handled it pretty well, but was a touch sore at the end. In fact, the first 8 miles were actually some of the strongest training miles in a while. (The last two were a good lesson on mental strength.)
Then I ran 5.5 slow, uncomfortable miles yesterday. My quads were pissed off! I cut off the last .5 because I just didn’t have it in me to run the big hill. On the bright side, despite feeling sore at the beginning, my foot did fine.
8 days. Even though a part of me wants to cram in one more back to back long run, I think it’s time to accept where I am and just realize that the second day will be slow and uncomfortable.
Perhaps I should start thinking about my training for Riverboat…
Have you run a long race undertrained? How’d that go for you? Any tips on surviving? (Bearing in mind, I won’t be hopping in an ice bath after race #1, but rather jumping in my car for a two hour drive home…)
Take it easy next week before your double. What’s done, or undone, is done. Be a good little turtle.
And yes, in about a month it is time to start training for Riverboat! So excited!
You are right, there is nothing you can do now that will make it better except resting up for the big weekend. More than anything (you probably already know this) I would just take both races easy so you have a little more for day two and stretch, stretch, stretch on that drive home. I know it’s only a couple of hours, but I would get out every 3o to 45 minutes and walk around and move…otherwise you’ll be super sore when you get home. Good luck!
If only we could keep that training stored somewhere and bring it out when we need it. But having said that, the experience you gained running those five races, pacing yourself so you could finish them all will be a big help doing these back to back halves. I’ve seen you do what you put your mind to over and over again and I’m sure you’ll get this done.
Will you be in Richmond on Friday? Want to get together to take your mind off your possible undertraining?
well….the first one like you said should be lovely…so the second one just think of as something like bootcamp, you have to do it to stay in the club. HA! 🙂 good luck
I was nervous when I ran my last half because I didn’t run or sleep hardly at all the week before the race. I did pretty good, though. Good luck.
Ahem. I ALWAYS under-train, haha!! Actually there was a good article in Triathlete mag recently about the ‘training bank’ we do actually have…and that the knowledge and confidence we have does actually carry us through the races… we train for the races so that we don’t have a bad recovery, and perhaps so we can be more efficient and/or faster, etc…but just running the races can happen anytime! You might just hurt more afterwards…I’d say hydration/nutrition is key so that you can endure…and understand that next week will hurt more.
Just my humble opinion – I’m sure I’m no expert – I’ve never done back to back races at all. But I am KIND of an expert on under-training, and it’s amazing what you can do with the right stomach-set. GOOD LUCK!!