Monday, April 12, 2010

Recovering quicker than expected...

I started writing a blog post this morning about how incredibly sore I was from yesterday's 10 mile run. Both of my calves were pretty much cramping up all day and night yesterday, even after a 30 minute post-run stretch session and a very long cold shower. I was going to write about how I realized how much harder this has all just become. How I am finally realizing what I am getting into. How I now see why this marathon idea is just crazy. Then, something wild happened. I went on along with my usual Sunday. Jaz and I went to church, bought groceries, took a nap, hung out with my Mike, Tracy, Haley (my goddaughter), and Aiden, visited my nieces at my mom's house, then ate dinner at Entourage with Jaz. I thought for sure I would be hurting throughout the day, and maybe even into tomorrow. But oddly enough, I was pretty ok. There were still lingering effects from yesterday's run, but for the most part, I was pretty well recovered. One good night sleep (which may not happen tonight as I am looking at 12:02AM on my system clock) and I should be good to workout the next day.

Now that I have my legs under me again today I think my physical damage has been repaired, but now onto the psychological damage to fix. Ten miles was the longest I have ever run, and obviously will not be the longest I'd ever run. In the next couple months I'll be going much further, and once the CARA team training starts in June, I'll end up getting up to 20 miles. So, at some point I'll be running twice the distance I ran yesterday. Oh dear! I am starting to realize the magnitude of this race, and I am starting to get scared. As I mentioned in my Daily Mile post about my 10 mile run, I have friended many good running resources on Twitter and Daily Mile who I am so grateful for. These people are my motivation because I know at some point in their running career, they were at this same point in their training and may have had similar doubts and worries. And now they are running 10-15 miles with no issue. Why can't that be me? I know that it can't happen now, but it can happen over time if I stick to it. I will continue to use them as my inspiration...here are a couple of the people who inspire my running:

  • Chanthana - Twitter/DailyMile

  • Sergio - Twitter/DailyMile

  • Mark - Twitter

  • Freddy - Twitter/DailyMile

  • Jordan - Twitter/DailyMile

  • Brian - DailyMile


  • Time to rest up...and get ready for another week of training! Oh yeah...and one more source of motivation:
    Alyssa and Me


    1 comment:

    Chanthana said...

    Joe! Thank you for the shoutout! Congrats on the 10-miler :-) You have every right to be scared to think of running distances twice (and more) than your recent longest run. It's totally normal. But you will get there. It takes time and patience. Slowly build that mileage and endurance. You will be pleasantly surprised at your progress. It's fun to see you journaling your thoughts and running logs. You will look back on them the day before 10/10/10 and think "I can do this! It is time!" Enjoy the training with CARA. It changed my life for the better. I've met amazing people through the marathon training program, and so will you. In the meantime, your friends on Twitter and Dailymile (including me!) are here to support you every step of the way. Go Cheeto!