Part 1
Week 1: October 9th-15th
What a week it has been. There have been a few highs but mostly lows to this week. I will start with the highs. I am overjoyed coming back to the city after my brother’s wedding. It was great to see my family and even more great celebrating the new marriage of my brother and now sister-in-law! I also had a decent threshold session on Thursday. I ran 5 miles. The 3 middle miles being around my threshold with the pace averages of 8’21, 8’06, and 7’50! Very happy with how my body did with it being my first run back in a week due to the wedding and increased pain in my feet.
Now let’s get into the lows. To start, everything that is going on in Israel is absolutely heartbreaking. Then to go into what is going on with me personally, my body is going through some flare ups. Both of my feet are bothering me. My coach and I think it could be plantar fasciitis. So unfortunately I had to take my run on Tuesday to the bike for some cross training. And then unfortunately I woke up to a cold Friday morning and my coach and I made the decision for me to completely rest on Saturday and not do my long run.
If I am being honest, I am currently feeling extremely frustrated. I am trying not to worry and think negative thoughts about what could happen next week and on my race. But it’s just hard not to go there mentally. I have been building up for this race since July with the hope of running sub 24 minutes. My parents are flying in from Minnesota to watch me race. And this race is overall just important to me as it is on marathon weekend and I will be running on an awesome but tough course.
Right now my thoughts are, “Why God?” “Where are you God?” “What is your plan God?” “Please heal me God?” But ultimately I have to trust in Him. I can’t see the whole picture. Right now I do feel abandoned and not taken care of. There is a lot of opposition happening at probably the worst time in this build up. But I need to focus on Jesus and not my problems. If I truly believe in Jesus, which I obviously do, I have to trust Him. Right now things are not looking good. But I serve a good and faithful God. My hope is found in Him and I will continue to choose to walk or in my case run by faith.
Week 2: October 16th-22nd
This week was another subpar week for me. I was sick for the first half of the week and still had some foot pain lingering. However I am grateful that I was able to get in all three runs this week after two weeks of missed runs because of life happening. My first two runs of the week were easy runs. I took these runs even slower than usual for two reasons. 1. I wanted to continue to heal from being sick and not prolong the healing process. 2. I want to try to take my easy runs even easier and see if it helps decrease pain in my feet. There is a good chance that I am running my easy runs too fast, leaving me unable to recover for my hard effort days. To be honest doing this is so hard for me. I love how my body feels running at faster paces. Since I am getting more aerobically fit and my easy runs still feel easy to me even though I sped them up weeks prior, my body may not be able to handle that much stress at this time. Like I said, it is hard mentally and everything in me wants to speed up during my easy runs. But I am trying to remember all of the benefits of taking my easy runs truly easy and focus on all I am gaining mentally as well. I do believe that I am gaining mental strength and focus by doing something my body doesn’t want to do or that I don’t enjoy as much.
On Saturday I finally got to do a hard workout again. This workout was probably one of the hardest workouts in my build since July. My coach prescribed me to do 1 mile easy warm up, 3×1 mile repeats at race pace with a 3 min rest between each mile, and 1 mile easy cool down. I decided to take this workout to Central Park instead of the track to be able to do my third mile repeat on the race course so I am somewhat prepared for race day. The workout was super tough. However I am happy that I was able to hit the paces my coach gave me on the mile repeats. After the session I felt neither overly confident or defeated. How I am currently feeling is in the middle. I feel like that is the best place to be. I believe that the paces I ran are possible to run my 5k at, but it will definitely be a grind!
I am excited and nervous for these next two weeks. I am now heading into my taper to get my legs fresh and ready to race! Week 3 lets do it!
-Shara