I'm Done with Race Training (for a while)

I am writing this from the comfort of sweats in my apartment. This morning seems like it was a week ago now. Except, if I get up to refill my water bottle, I know my calves and hamstrings will remind me that yes, in fact, I ran my fourth half-marathon this morning.

I will be posting a full recap of the inaugural Nike Women's Half Marathon DC, but I'm exhausted and want to do a "feelings" post, for lack of a better word. I will share more about the overall experience, I promise! It was a great time.

I raced hard and faced some of the same issues I've had over the past few months: tight calves and some right hamstring and kneecap pain. But more than that, I felt exhausted. My heart wasn't in it. So often I thought to myself, "I wish I could just stop. I wish I weren't doing this."

I kept trying to reframe and push myself, but somehow my legs wouldn't move faster. I would will them to turn over more quickly, and think they had, yet the numbers on my Garmin wouldn't budge. At one point, I actually thought, "I wish the pain in my knee would get worse so I could have a reason to go to the medic's tent and stop." Why was my brain going there??

I finished with 2:01:51. Instead of being heartbroken at missing sub-2, I just felt relieved to be done.

On our ride back from DC, Julianne said she thought you needed three things to successfully run a race: body, mind, and heart. And without all three, you couldn't meet your full potential. As much as my body seemed to give me problems today, I can't honestly say my mind and heart were fighting.

I don't want to be on a long distance race course for a while.

I'm not sure why, but I think I'm mentally and physically "over" training. I started training in August 2012 for Grete's Great Gallop, my first half-marathon. I signed up for the Last Chance December 31 Half-Marathon soon after, so I had a week or two off before I dived into training again.

I hurt myself in that race, so I took a couple weeks off, but was eager to rededicate myself for the NYC Half in mid-March. Where I missed my sub-2 goal by 1 second, coming in at 2:00:00.

I'd had various leg pains prior to the NYC Half and they continued after, on top of me feeling various kinds of sick. I ran the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler as a long run because I'd been sick, and it felt like a slog the whole way.

After training almost non-stop since last August, I think my body is sending me a signal. Well, I think my body has been sending me a signal since before the NYC Half, but my mind has officially caught up.

Today told me loud and clear that, for now, my body, my heart and my mind want a break from training. I am still eager to run the Chicago Marathon, for which I'll start training in June. For the next month, though, there will be no training. There will be workouts and runs and yoga, but no specific training plans.

Phew, that feels really good to write.

But hey, at least I got a Tiffany's necklace from a guy in a tux and red sunglasses, right?

So... have you ever burnt yourself out on training?