Andy Gapin

Today was the Westfield Turkey Trot 5-mile race through Tamaques Park, which was actually one of the parks that I trained in for the RU Unite half-marathon earlier this year. It’s a nice little park with a .8 mile loop so it’s good for short runs, but anything more than a few miles gets really boring.

Today was chilly and windy, not the most fun weather for standing around waiting for a race to start. Because of the high winds today, gusting up to 30 mph, it was hard to decide what to wear, but I stuck with what I would normally wear for a 39 degree run. I was freezing while waiting for the race to start, my toes even went completely numb. It was actually hard to fight the feeling that I didn’t dress warm enough, but I knew once I started running, I’d warm up. I was right. My toes didn’t thaw out until after the second mile, but by the the time I finished the first mile, the rest of me was plenty warm. By the end of the race, I was dripping sweat.

The course wasn’t too shabby. The race started with a lap and a half in the park and then continued through residential Westfield with a final half lap in the park again. The course was marked well and the race was organized, the only real complaint to be made was that the race wasn’t chipped. That means that at the end of the race, you have to run down a chute and stay in order. People grab the tag at the bottom of your bib which sometimes means that you’re standing there for a few seconds waiting for them. Unfortunately, this was another run with a dry-heaving finish for me. I nearly puked on the girl taking the tags at the end because I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Anyway, my performance…

My goal was 35 minutes and as you can see from the title, I beat that pretty decently. I started off feeling strong, but slowed a little as the race continued. Overall, my pace was 6:47 which is pretty solid for me, but I ran for a mile and a half with a side cramp that did not feel good at all and my legs were tired. The gusts of wind made it hard to breathe, but not as bad as I thought it would be. Even though I was slowly slowing down throughout the race, I finished strong with as much of a sprint as I could muster. 33:56 put me at 53rd overall out of 843 total runners. I was third in my age group. And best of all, since I’ve never run a 5-mile race before, that time was my PR.

Even though it was windy out, it was a good race and a performance I can be happy with. I would definitely run it again.

Last year, the Sean Hanna Foundation 5k was where I set what was my personal best 5k time which took until last Saturday’s race at Rutgers for me to beat. This year, I didn’t set out to PR again. I mean, it would have been awesome, but after last Saturday’s race, I was still so happy that I wasn’t about to hurt myself pushing harder.

I love this race for a few reasons. First, it’s in the name of a friend of mine who unfortunately passed three years ago from cancer. So unlike any other race, this one has a little more personal meaning to me. Second, the first year they did this race was my first ever 5k (let’s just say my time was more than seven minutes slower then than this year). Third, the race is run in Duke Island Park in Bridgewater. I really love this park. It’s where my fiancée and I run after work and it has a nice mix of forest, open park, and riverside paths. Forth, it’s a small race with a great vibe. Now, it’s not always the best organized race, but it was better than last week’s Rutgers race. This year, the race started really late, about 20 minutes, which was awkward and kind of rough after spending a little bit of time moving around and loosening up.

Like last week, I started off right in the front so I wouldn’t have to run around anyone. At this point, I know what kind of a runner I am and where I should be starting. I didn’t take off quite like I did last week when the race started, but I still started off quickly to separate myself from most of the pack a little. From there, there was very little position change, I think I passed one or two people through the rest of the race and that was it. My first mile was about the same speed as last week’s, but somehow I lost a lot in my second mile. I thought I was picking it up, but I guess not. I did pick it up for real in my third mile, but my legs started to feel like rubber a bit. I was pushing, but not quite 100%. As much as I would have loved to beat last week’s time, for the first time ever, I didn’t feel like I had to beat my best time so I didn’t push as much as I could have. And to be honest, I really didn’t have much more to give.

I finished just a little slower than last week, only 12 seconds off, but I didn’t feel like I was going to puke which was nice. I’m really happy with my time. Even though the weather was a little nicer for this race than it was last week, I was just glad to know that it wasn’t a fluke and that this is really where I’m at right now. 20:41 was good enough to get me in at 7th overall and 2nd for my age group. Even though it was a small race with just 179 runners, you can’t be unhappy with numbers like that.

This morning, I ran the Rutgers Alumni Run for Rutgers Against Hunger as part of the homecoming festivities. This was a small race, only 253 runners total. The course was pretty nice, very flat, but it wasn’t well marked at all. There were some small, easy to miss signs and a person or two standing at corners where you needed to turn, but they weren’t wearing anything to make them stand out from students on campus. The roads also weren’t entirely blocked off so you couldn’t go by that either. Because of the small size of the race, it was easy to end up all by yourself for a little while so if you weren’t paying attention and looking down the road at where other runners were turning, it was easy to miss a turn. Luckily, I did not.

Since the race was so small, I made sure to start right in the very front so I wouldn’t have to run around anyone. This was also helpful since there was no sensor at the start of the race leaving you with just the gun time at the end which doesn’t take into count how long it takes you to actually cross the starting line. The first mile of the race was straight into a long gust of wind, but I powered though it as best I could at a solid pace. The wind must have been around 20mph at the time and it was taking my breath away a little. Breathing was definitely a little difficult through this and starting out that way didn’t give me much of a chance to ever catch my breath again. I just powered through as much as I could though.

The second mile was my slowest of the three. I’m not sure why, actually. I was trying to pick it up a little, but I just couldn’t breathe deeply. I think I may need to do more intense cardio training to get my breathing up to par. Once I hit a pace faster than about 7:20/mile, I start losing the ability to breathe deeply with my diaphragm and I end up with nothing but short little breaths that just don’t get the job done.

Once I hit the third mile, I started to push a little more, but as I got down to the last half mile, I started feeling the throw up feeling coming out to play. I kept steady and fought it back, but couldn’t break out into that end-of-race sprint that I generally try to do. I wasn’t able to start sprinting until the last 50-100ft. Then I crossed the finish line…and threw up. This seems to be my new thing lately. Maybe it’s the peanut butter sandwiches I’ve been eating an hour before the race?

At any rate, this was by far my best race ever. My time was 20:29 which completely smashes my previous 5k personal record of 23:07. I’m utterly ecstatic about it, actually. My goal was 21 minutes and I beat that by a good chunk of time. Very happy about this. That time put me at 11th overall (also, 11th for men, the first female finisher was a little after me). The winner was 16:51 which is a time I don’t kid myself into ever thinking I’ll be able hit, but being able to finish in the top 5% is absolutely amazing.

In addition to that, this was a fun race because of the amount of people I knew running it. I knew six or seven other runners so it was great to be able to stand on the side near the finish and cheer for everyone as they finished.

I’ve got another 5k coming up on Saturday for the Sean Hanna Foundation. It’s their third annual race and I’ve been a part since the first so I don’t plan to ever miss one. I’m excited to see what this race has in store for me. I don’t know that I’ll be able to beat today’s time, but even if I can come close, I’ll be happy.

I’ve been wanting to pick up a pair of these for a long time now. I’ve been intrigued by barefoot running for about as long as I’ve been running, I’ve read a lot about it and I know how much better it can be for you. Better performance, better injury resistance, better form and posture, stronger feet, and better overall health for your running parts. I always had tough feet as a kid because I loved being barefoot, but I was still afraid to try running around town without shoes on. When I found out about Vibram Five Fingers, I knew I needed to try them. I’ve read a ton of great reviews about them, but unfortunately, they’re not easy to find. Only a few stores seem to carry them and none of them are convenient to get to for me. Normally, I’d just order online, but I felt like this was the kind of thing that needed to be tried on.

Well, I got around to making out to one of these stores yesterday and I tried a pair on. Definitely an interesting feel. They weren’t too hard to get on, but it did take a couple minutes to coax each of my toes to go into the right pocket. After walking around the store for a few minutes, I figured it was time to hand over some money. My fiancée and I both walked out with a pair of the KSO model. For $85 each, it wasn’t too bad compared to most running shoes, though it’s a bit more than the shoes I’m retiring because I never believed in expensive running shoes–just like stretching, there are many studies that support this feeling.

This morning was the first run with them. We mentally prepared ourselves for something that was probably going to be a bit different than we were used to. Most things we’ve read said to just do a mile the first time, we did two.

The first mile was definitely a bit awkward. The shoes feel different on than you’re used to and even though they provide a lot protection from getting your feet sliced up, you do feel most of what you’re stepping on. I landed on an acorn about a minute in and, trust me, I felt it. After that acorn, the I started watching where my foot was landing with each step to make sure it was a clear landing. My feet felt like they were landing hard at first and it felt like I was landing with my entire foot flat instead of on the ball of my foot like I do normally and like you’re supposed to. We were trying to pace ourselves very slowly to ease our bodies into it, it felt like we were only going at about a ten minute mile pace, but at the one mile mark, RunKeeper chimed in my ear to let me know that we were at about 9:10/mile. I was a little shocked. I felt like we were running much more slowly than that.

The second mile was completely different story than the first. My body felt like it eased into the Vibrams and my legs felt like giant springs, they wanted to go. I forgot all about the fact that I was trying out something different I just wanted to fly down the street. I held myself back to prevent myself from doing anything stupid and regretting it tomorrow, but my legs felt peppy and great. By this point, it didn’t even feel like I was wearing anything. The Vibrams just felt like a second skin and I even stopped paying attention to what I was stepping on. They responded amazingly to every move my body made, much better than a sneaker. I felt great.

I’m really impressed with the way these shoes felt today. I can’t wait to get out and run in them again. I don’t want to hold back with my next run, I want to do a nice 5 mile run at 8 minutes per mile.

Most of what I’ve read from people about their experiences with Vibrams included that the first couple of runs left them feeling sore in muscles they didn’t even know they had. I don’t feel sore at all right now. I actually feel great. Before the run, I had some ankle pain left over from Thursday’s 8 mile run, nothing major though. That feels slightly better now, surprisingly. We’ll see how my legs feel tomorrow, but I feel like between all the mountain biking I used to do and the snowboarding, there aren’t really any muscles in my legs that haven’t been put through the paces already. We’ll see though, I haven’t been on a bike in quite a long time and my snowboard has been collecting dust since February.

All in all, after one run, I love these things, I would definitely recommend them. But it was just one run so far, we’ll see how I feel about them after a few weeks. I’m excited though. I plan to run in the full time, including all races. If everything I’ve heard is true, my knees should thank me.

What I’ve read about them suggests that should last between 1,000 and 2,000 miles, easily. I’m stoked about that, much better than sneakers. And the KSO is recommended for everything; running, trail-running, climbing, trekking, kayaking, general water-shoe replacements. I feel like these are going to get a ton of use. Oh! And they’re machine washable!

My suggestion for anyone looking to get them though is to run two miles the first time. Quit there and don’t over do it, but don’t let the first mile be an indicator of anything.

Runners! Stretching doesn’t really help!:

I’ve been saying this for a long time now. I’ve read about stretching actually not providing any benefit before and it seems in line with my personal experiences as well. I don’t stretch before running except for very rare occasions and my legs are just fine. I do a few minutes of walking before I start and after I’m finished running, but that’s about it. 

I do stretch before I play soccer though and 90% of the time when my legs are sore after physical activity, it’s from soccer. To be fair, soccer is a lot different. There’s a lot of full speed sprinting and variable speed running with standing and walking mixed in the middle all over the place. But the fact still is, the activity I stretch before tends to be the one producing any soreness I may have. I don’t know why I stretch before it when I don’t for anything else though. Maybe it’s time to stop.

It’s been happening more and more lately, but I had to skip out on the radio show last night. The Funhouse kids, CJ and Dan, that generally follow The Playlist these days covered the extra hour. Maybe the fact that this is happening more often now should be a good indicator that it’s time to move on. I enjoy doing the show–once I’m actually doing it, anyway–but it seems that a lot goes on on Wednesdays that I have to skip out on because of it.

Anyway, I ran a 5k in Downtown Westfield last night instead of doing the show. It was humid, but luckily, the heat died down a little before the race started. I found that, just like the 4 mile race I ran on the Fourth of July, the humidity killed me. I had trouble breathing and felt like I was going to throw up for the last mile. It was not my best race, but I beat my time from the same race last year by about 15 seconds and it was my third fastest 5k ever. I should probably be pretty happy about that. Though races like this make me ask myself why I do them and why I like to run, but that’s for another post that maybe I’ll make soon.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this post, but my iPhone 4 battery life was seriously impressive last night. I got home with 33% left after having the phone away from a charger for 15 hours. My usage over those 15 hours breaks down something like this:

• About 3.75 hours of reading articles on Google Reader, using Twitter/Facebook, reading other websites. About 80% of this was over 3G
• About 30 minutes of GPS use during the race to track my progress and time. Then I uploaded the route to mapmyfitness.com using their app. (I did not take 30 minutes to run the race, I fired it up about ten minutes early).
• Listened to music during the race
• Snapped a few pictures and emailed them off
• Updated 5 or 6 apps that had updates available
• Made a 2 minute phone call
• Kept push and WiFi turned on all day

I’d say that’s pretty impressive. My old 3GS and 3G would not have been able to pull that off.

I did it! After months of training, today was the big day. I spent the last week doing a taper and rested up yesterday, doing little more than a nice walk through my town to stretch out my legs. My fiancée and I set out our clothes and devised our game plan for the morning so all we had to do was wake up, get dressed, and head on over to the race.

It was pretty cold this morning, in the 40s, and the weather forecast wasn’t predicting it to get all that much warmer doing the hours of the race. This threw me off a bit, I generally prefer to run in shorts and a t-shirt, but it was seeming like that was going to be a bit under-dressed for the start of the race. I made a last minute decision to throw on some spandex under my shorts. I also grabbed a long sleeve t-shirt to throw on over top. Unfortunately, I don’t have many long sleeve t-shirts so it was hard to find one that I was okay with potentially ditching on the side of the road. After that, I ate a small breakfast, half a peanut butter sandwich and a bowl of fruit. It was only two hours until race time so I didn’t want to eat too much, but I knew I needed enough to sustain me throughout the race.

When we left the house to head over to the race, it was definitely cold out. Not the kind of cold that’s unbearable on a normal day this time of year, but the kind of cold that I hate to run in. We got over to where the race started about an hour beforehand and tried to walk around as much as possible and hydrate ourselves as best we could without the potential of having to pee mid-race. Through all of this walking around, I started to get more and more nervous about the weather. It was beautifully sunny, but I was worried that my hands were going to freeze while running since I didn’t have any gloves to wear. There wasn’t much that I could do about it at this point, I was going to have to run with what I had so I went to the bathroom one last time and my fiancée and I wished each other luck. Then we headed on over to our respective starting groups, which we later found out were too slow for us.

While standing behind the pacer, waiting for the race to start, I started to warm up a ton, probably a combination of the sun coming up more and standing around very close to a large group of people. I started to get more comfortable with the temperature as I warmed up my legs by jumping up and down in place a bit. I realized that I had been worrying too much about the coldness and that the long sleeve shirt was a huge mistake. I didn’t want to have to ditch it, so I decided to tie it around my waist like a total goober. I thought I had my mind all set and was ready to go, but then at this very moment, my mouth went completely dry. I had complete and utter cotton-mouth and there was nothing I could do about it at this point. I was stuck and it never got better. I ran the entire race like this.

Finally, it was time for the race to start and much to my surprise, it started quickly. It did not take long at all to actually get up to the starting point, less than 50 seconds, much less than many of the 5ks that I’ve done. Unfortunately, there were a ton of people though and just like any other race I’ve run, I had to carefully make my way up through the pack and find and open spot at a comfortable speed. I almost immediately regretted wearing the spandex under my shorts, I couldn’t believe how quickly that happened, it was less than a half of a mile. But unlike the shirt, I was stuck with this.

Through the first couple of miles, I was feeling very good. I felt comfortable with the pace I had chosen and felt like I could keep it for a long time. Unfortunately, this pace was much faster than the group I started with so I had to do a lot of weaving to get up to where I needed to be. I was surprised to see that within the first 2-3 miles, there were already a bunch of people running off the side to go to the bathroom. How did these people have to pee so quickly? Poor planning.

Up through the first five miles, I was feeling amazingly great. I got settled into the run–this generally seems to take me at least three miles for most of my longer runs–and was keeping a pace much, much faster than I had trained with. I managed my pace based on my breathing and as long as I was able to breathe comfortably, I kept upping it until just under the point where my breathing would have started to get heavy. This was a tactic I’d never used before today, but it worked great.

My goal for the day was to finish in under two hours, which up until race day seemed like it would be a challenge for me. I really didn’t know what to expect from my body. I think I was more worried about sustaining this pace for two hours rather than worrying about the overall distance. So here I was at the fifth mile keeping an amazing pace, completely blowing away what I was even hoping to do, and feeling very great with it.

Some may call this cheating, but I like to run with my iPhone, both for music and for the IMapMyFitness app which uses the GPS to track your time, speed, and course. It’s a great app and I’ve been using it for almost as long as I’ve been running. It’s really nice to receive the audio updates of what your time, distance, and pace are, but if you’re not careful, it can kind of kill your run too. You have to be very careful not to focus on that and think too much about it. This is something that I often do when running, but it also helps me to be able to push myself a little more than I otherwise would. But for today, I would say it ended up helping me quite a bit. I found that I was barely paying attention to my music, which is rare for when I run. Today, I was much more focused on the running.

Anyway, back to mile five, IMapMyFitness was telling me that my pace was way ahead of where I wanted to be, but again, I felt good about it, so I decided to change my goal. I bumped up my time quite a bit and set aim to keep this pace throughout the race. I knew that later in the race, it would be difficult, but it felt doable to me. The only problem was that less than a mile after deciding this is when my knee started to hurt. The left one, the one that’s always been a problem for me. It was tolerable, but I didn’t know how much worse it would get. I ran through it and said to myself “screw it, this is the day you’ve been training for, you’re not going to do any new damage to your knee today, deal with it.” So deal with it, I did. Luckily, the pain was short-lived and ol’ Lefty fell in line within less than a mile.

So I was back to feeling good again as the course continued onto the first part where it switched back on itself. This was particularly annoying because there was a complete 180° turn and not a lot of room to do it. I tried to take the turn as wide as possible, but it was still tough. Running back up along the stretch I just came from, I kept an eye out for the fiancée and when I finally saw her, I got a huge bump of optimism as I could see that she was clearly killing it. She was just slightly behind the nine minute mile pacer that I was originally lined up behind and I could see it on her face that she was feeling good too. This powered me through quite a bit up to mile eight. But this is when I really started to feel fatigued. It came on quickly too, but I was feeling it now. I knew I could keep it going for a while still, but I was starting to worry about the entirety of the last five miles.

As I approached mile nine, things started to feel even worse. I was starting to struggle to keep my speed now and then, mid-update, my IMapMyFitness crashed and took out my music too. I actually thought my battery had died since the GPS is a huge drain, but it felt a little quick for that. I had run with it much longer than this a few times and it still didn’t come close to dying. I didn’t worry about it though, I didn’t need to know my pace anymore, at this point, I had to just continue to give it all I had. I was feeling it though and for the first time all race, as I came up to the aid station, I decided to grab a Gatorade instead of water. It didn’t really do too much to help me and my body was really telling me that it wanted to stop, but I resisted the urge to slow down and knew the rest of the race was going to be tough.

The course doubled back on itself again with another 180° turn which was just as annoying as the first, but this time, I knew that the section that I had to run back up was much longer than last time. I started to slow down just a bit, I was struggling even more now than I was before, but I was still powering through as best I could. I saw the fiancée coming up again so I ran closer to the middle and put my hand up for a high-five. She was looking good, not much pain in her face. We high-fived and kept going. I was hoping that would give me a bit of a mental boost, but it didn’t. I was tired as hell and as I ran by the ten mile marker, I thought to myself “seriously, I have to do a whole 5k still?” That realization didn’t help at all, but I tried my best to stay positive and remind myself that I didn’t have that much left. At this point, I was giving it almost everything I had to keep on pace with the other runners around me. A couple started to pass me, but I wanted to keep going as fast as I could without completely killing the energy I had left to make it to the finish line.

I made it up to the eleventh mile marker and started to push as much as I could, but this was really getting to be a serious struggle. I mean, it had been a struggle for a while, but my legs were not only fatiguing heavily, but they were starting to hurt too. From my thighs to my calves to my feet, it all hurt and my knees weren’t happy either. At the next aid station, I actually had to slow down to a walk for about ten seconds to drink a cup of water. I knew I needed to get the water in me instead of all over my face this time. I didn’t want to slow down, but it had to be done. My body was saying “Yeah! Yeah! Stop!” There was no way I was giving in though, I was too close. I tried to pick it up a little here, but my body wasn’t cooperating, every time I pushed faster, my body pushed back and said to me “hey, if you’re going to do that, I’m going to make sure you puke all over the place, don’t be ass. Got it?” I listened to it here, but I made a deal with myself that I was going to push as hard as I could once I hit the final stretch.

Then, my music came back on out of nowhere. I don’t know what happened, but IMapMyFitness finished the audio update it had started three miles earlier and my music started playing again. It was weird and almost threw me off a bit, but it was kind of nice to hear what the current time was at this point.

When the final stretch came, there was about half a mile left. I told myself that it was time to give it every last bit of energy I had and tried to do just that. I started to push hard, but my body wasn’t having it. I had to slow it back down or I was definitely going to throw up. This was quite upsetting, but I really didn’t want to throw up, so I kept it at just under the breaking point for as long as I could. As I approached the finish, I saw the fiancée’s parents cheering and as much as I wanted this to help, it didn’t do much. I was running a little faster now, but not a whole lot.

The course took a final turn for the last tenth of a mile. Why the course was designed to have a turn like that at the end, I have no idea, but it was there. I came down the final bit and started giving it more. If I puked across the finish line, I didn’t care anymore. I saw the clock and knew that I had done better than what I had set my goal to at mile five, but I still wanted to shave off every last second I could. A couple hundred feet from the finish line, I saw a girl out of the corner of my eye coming up about to pass me. I don’t know why I cared, but with only a couple hundred feet left, I wasn’t letting anyone pass me just before I finished. I broke out into a full on sprint. I don’t know where that energy came from, but it lasted just long enough to get me across the finish line.

My final time was great. So much better than I was originally hoping for. My official chip time was 1:47:11. At 8:11/mile, that’s a full minute per mile faster than I needed for my original goal. Overall, I finished #440 out of 2433 total runners and #334 of out of 1078 men. I couldn’t be any happier with my time, I blew away my goal and I know that there wasn’t anything I could have done today to shave even a couple of seconds off. My fiancée finished at 2:02:15 which also put her a full minute per mile ahead of where she wanted to be. But unlike me, she didn’t struggle as much at the end. Even as I watched (and videoed from my iPhone) her come down the last few hundred feet and across the finish line, she looked composed and like she could have just kept on going. I was impressed.

Afterward, I was definitely in pain. My legs were sore all over, my knees and feet hurt, it wasn’t a great feeling. We walked around a lot for a while before heading home to help keep from tightening up, but it was difficult. After a shower, I started to feel much better and was gaining some energy back, but then we went to Red Robin and devoured a ton of food. When we got home, I died on the bed for a couple of hours and when I woke up, my knees were sore as hell. Some of my leg muscles are sore too, but not like they were before. It’s mostly my knees. I’m seriously walking like an old man right now.

All in all, I think the training that we did helped a lot…at least for the first nine miles. Though, it didn’t do anything at all to prepare me for those last four miles. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that almost all of my training was at a pace around ten minutes per mile instead of what I ended up running today. My goal through that was to teach myself to be able to keep a slower pace for a longer period of time, which is something that I tend to struggle with. My body feels more comfortable at a bit of a faster pace, but it’s not a sustainable pace for thirteen miles.

So would I do it again? Probably, but it’s going to be hard, I had a great time and anything less than that will feel like a failure. I’d have to step up the training and build more stamina in my legs. They have a lot of strength thanks to all the mountain biking (this helps a lot when running uphill), but I need to train them to sustain this kind of speed better.

One thing that I’ve definitely learned through all of this is that a full marathon is probably a bit out of my grasp. I would love to be able to do it, but with the way my knees feel right now, I can’t imagine it to be a good idea. Plus, finding the time to do the training for this was tough enough, but to have to train for a full marathon would probably make for a bigger lifestyle change than I’m willing to make.

I like to run. It’s something that’s relatively new to me, as a kid, I was active, but I hated running when it wasn’t a part of doing something else. However, in the last couple of years, I’ve developed quite a fondness for running all by itself. Besides enjoying the activity itself, I like that I’m staying in shape and how it makes me feel about myself afterwards, I feel accomplished, energized, and all around much healthier. When I started, I didn’t have much of a goal other than keeping in decent shape, but in the course of the last year, I realized that I would like to try to run a half marathon. A full marathon may be a bit of a stretch for me based on the amount of time I can devote to training and the state of my knees–which actually don’t bother me when I run, only when I stand still for more than 15 minutes at a time. But a half marathon feels doable to me.

So I decided that I’d run the Rutgers Half Marathon next month and I started official training about a month ago. Since my normal run is usually about five miles and I’ve done a couple of ten mile runs for fun, I knew that my training didn’t need to be super intense. But the thing that I’m finding out, is that this half marathon is making me hate running. One of the blogs that I often read likes to mention that training for a marathon can have a huge effect of your life, both in your outlook and your attitude. The writer likes to mention how he learned a lot through the process and looks at life and situations differently because of it. But you know what? I’m just not seeing it.

Training for this half marathon is a chore. It’s taken all of the fun out of running. Instead of having fun and being able to run when I want and how far I want, I have to keep a schedule and work my life around that. I’m starting to find myself extremely stressed because of an overall lack of time in my life for a lot of the things I want and need to get done. Running can take up a lot of time and it also means that you need to have time to shower afterwards before doing something else. You also need to pay more attention to what and when you eat as well. It really messes with your whole schedule.

Additionally, I need to push myself sometimes when I really don’t feel like I have it in me to run an extra couple miles or so that day. Sometimes, at the end of the run, I’m glad that I was able to push myself a little more than I would have otherwise. These are the runs where I got past the block that was holding me back. But sometimes, I feel like I had to push too hard and afterwards I’m done for the day. I’m not energized after these runs and I didn’t have fun either. These runs do not feel worth it at all.

For an actual athlete, this is what you’re supposed to go through, but for something that I do just as fun, I don’t know that it’s worth it. I’m sure that at the end of the half marathon, I’ll feel accomplished and proud of myself for finishing the 13.1 mile run, but I don’t see gaining much else from this. I was hoping that if this went well, I would be able to do the Disney full marathon in January, since I’ll be there that week already, but now I’m debating even doing the half marathon there. I guess we’ll see how that turns out and it’s silly to make any decisions a month before this race, but right now, I’m feeling pretty negatively towards it.

I’m sure in the end, it’ll all seem worth it, but I worry that I’m not going to find running fun anymore after the race and I’m not going to want to continue doing it.