How to Revive a Bad Run
We’ve all been there. You’re about 5, 10 minutes into a run and you don’t know how you can go any longer. Your body doesn’t feel right…
We’ve all been there. You’re about 5, 10 minutes into a run and you don’t know how you can go any longer. Your body doesn’t feel right, your mind isn’t set right. You don’t enjoy anything about this run, so you think you should just quit. Come back tomorrow.
But you really need this run.
I’ve run a full marathon and 7 half marathons, so I feel like setting out for a 90-minute run should feel like just another day for me. Boy, was I wrong. I’ve been a treadmill warrior for most of my running life. I love setting my kindle over the time display and getting lost in a book while miles fly by underneath me. Not this past Saturday.
I went into my Week 4 90-minute run not feeling ready. I had been sick the last couple weekends and had taken it easy, so it had been a few weeks since my last 90-minute run. I worked out harder during the week to make up for being sick the week before, hardly giving my body any rest from lifting and running before stepping up to the treadmill Saturday morning. My body was sore and tired, dreading the 90 minutes before me. The only thing I was looking forward to was getting further into Still Alice, a great book I’m really into on the kindle. But even that couldn’t save me.
It’s funny how I can run three or four miles during the week without a problem. Then it’s time for a long run, and sometimes I think I can’t even make it to the three-mile mark. It’s all a pitiful mindset. Last fall I ran 16 miles on the treadmill hardly without a problem. Where the heck was that girl?
So I was around 35 minutes, treading slowly and feeling like death, when I stopped for yet another walking break. Walking breaks are nearly nonexistent in my running, but Saturday they may as well have dominated my run. I almost pushed stop right then after only 3.5 miles, and called it a day. Almost.
But I needed this run. I wanted it, I just couldn’t feel it. It was on my schedule and I knew I wouldn’t make it up. Kyle was taking me to a fancy Mexican restaurant after for lunch, and I was looking forward to a margarita. But I wanted to earn than margarita. I wanted to earn the chips and salsa. And two months from now, I’m going to be in the middle of my eighth half marathon, and I need this 90-minute run today. Whether it’s slow. Whether I walk. Whether I cry. I will be on this treadmill for 90 minutes.
I channeled my thoughts to what I would tell someone else in my position.
5 Ways to Revive a Bad Run
Change your music. Listening to music? Maybe your Pandora isn’t quite fitting your mood today. Change it to something upbeat and turn the volume up. I started with Rihanna and changed to Glee. I think it helped!
Read (or listen to) something motivational. I was reading a very good book, Still Alice, for the first part of my run. As my character slipped more and more into dementia, my mood slipped into depression. Switch over to The Long Run by Matt Long, the memoir of a man who was hit by a truck on his bicycle and ran the New York Marathon the following year. My “sore legs,” that I’m lucky to have at all, were plenty able to push through another 6 miles.
Envision your margarita. Or whatever it is you are looking forward to after your run. A hot shower? A cookie? Laying on the couch watching Titanic? All of the above? Visualize it. Would you still enjoy those things to the fullest if you didn’t do what you set out to do at the gym?
Speed up. My 90-minute runs are 3/1s, meaning I’m supposed to run the last fourth of my run faster or at race pace. Obviously I was not looking forward to that last fourth, given that I didn’t think I’d even make it that far. But I got there and I notched my mph button up a few times. Apparently that was the spark I needed to finally feel alive during this awful run.
Give yourself a break. I like to break my long runs into at least 2 parts. If I’m running 9 miles, I tell myself I’ll take a break at 4.5, step off the treadmill, walk around, stretch, text my fiance to come save me, use the bathroom, whatever. When 4.5 comes around, I try to push that extra half mile and play this mind game with myself. Then, when I come back from my break, I’m more than half way there and have only 3 miles to go. That’s nothing! Err…
Here’s a good article from Runner’s World for tips on running long on the treadmill. What are some things you do to keep from quitting a bad run?
Happy running ☺
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