WEGO: What a lesson you learned the hard way.
That is so easy for me-and that is when I got seriously injured the first time with my stress fracture (on my 21st birthday!).
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We must first look at preinjured Hollie. I was happy with most of my running performances, none would be that terrible. I never really had a run where I was good god I’m quitting running forever but I was always worn down. Rest days, um do you remember that time I woke up at 4:00 am to run predropping Matt off at college (in my defense he woke up too)?
Yeah that happened (but in my because I didn’t want to run at night and didn’t want to take a rest day.
It was a good run though, I do remember that. I ran a good pace and felt good. I believe it was 5 miles or something like that.
Incase you are wondering about my log book before my injury here ya go:
Starting from the week of April 11 I ran all of the following:
Road races on your 21st Birthday...Yeah that was my life. My apparently extremely sweaty life.
Between 40-50 miles: 7 weeks
Between 50-60 miles: 5 weeks
Above 60 miles: 1 week (although the week I stress fractured would have been easily up there).
I ran 248 miles in June. I wanted to hit 270 in July. It’s all I thought about. I was so mile crazy. Not only mile crazy but pace crazy. I also ran the majority of these miles on the treadmill so I could maintain between a 7:05-7:15 pace EVERY RUN.
But if you notice something, there is not that week of just 20-30 miles that I had told myself every week I would take. Why not? Because every time I would tell myself that, I would have another great run. Another run forcing myself until 7 minutes for 8 miles. Another run where I felt like shit and stil ran a 7:05 pace. Another run that I was pretty proud of.
If I had felt bad during any of my runs that probably would have given me an excuse to take that milage drop week. But it didn’t happen. If I had run a race in early July that wasn’t 1000 degrees, I would have PRed by god knows how much. I ran a 20:30 in a 5k doing absolutely no speed work. I was putting my pressure and stress on myself then I ever did with swimming (oh right…I’ve that lead to shoulder surgery and a YEAR long break).
But then I stress fractured and stopped running (completely) and hated swimming but did that for a while, made best friends with the Arc. It made me love running even more and miss it *so so* much.
I now time ONLY my “speed work”. I don’t care if my pace in 7:05 or 10:05, they are easy recovery runs and I know it’s better for my body. ESPECIALLY IN HIGH MILEAGE!
And I’m happy with that. I’m happy not forcing myself to run quickly every single run. I’m happy enjoying the scenery of whatever is around me. I have read a good amount of running books during my injury and not every run is needed to be fast to go somewhere.
If you are going to overtrain and be sad, then what’s the point?
Mentally you’ll suck so physically…you’ll suck.
This is all leading to some thesis statement of my introduction, I guess you could say.
Running without worry is liberating. I like it. I like not trying to push the envelope every run. I like that every run is how I feel-Some long, some short, some on grass, cement, with people, with Pandora, with dogs. I don’t care. I could run a 10 minute mile pace (and do!) and still be happy. I don’t think running pace is the most important factory anymore. I think running by how you feel is.
Well anyways, running is such a stress reliever. The more I learn about it-the more I like it (which Is hard since I already love running so much). Run fast, run slow, run on your favorite route, an unknown route and run happy.
What lesson have you learned the hard way?
