Elizabeth McCoy

I can hardly believe it, but I ran 13 miles this morning, which is the distance of a half marathon. I learned some things from last time:

* Run on a workday. It's far easier to keep running if the pep talk is "The alternative is you go inside and continue devising a test plan for your company's thumbnail-generating service" and not "The alternative is you go inside and work on the Peter Keith biography and the Old Irish teaching materials."

* Don't worry about distance, and try not to think about the running process at all, until you start to feel physically tired. For the first half of the run, I wasn't an athlete, just an academic out for a morning run. I knew I could do 4-5 loops (5-6.5 miles) without trying, and I spent the time thinking about Peter Keith, Old Irish, work, and whatever other interesting things came to mind.

Only once I started to feel physically tired did I switch into feeling like an athlete. And even then I didn't set particular goals strongly. I had 13 in the back of my mind, but I had lower numbers, too. I even told myself it was fine if I didn't equal last time's distance (although I would be very confused about why if not).

Toward the end, I started setting half-loop goals, and of course doing my usual thing of finding goalposts as often as possible: finish this loop, finish this mile, finish half a loop, etc. It's easier to hit a goal every 5 minutes than every 15 minutes. It really helped that the 9th loop was 11.75 miles, I decided to go on to 12, and then I realized it was just one! more! mile! to a half marathon.

What ultimately helped the most was that ever since I was in junior high, I've wanted to be able to push myself on distance running. I've wanted to be tired and pushing through it. And while I've certainly made myself run when I didn't feel like it before, I've never had this particular sensation before, except a little bit last time.

So I kept telling myself that I had been looking forward to this sensation for 30 years, that I finally had the opportunity, and that I wanted to enjoy it as long as possible. I realized that I have absolutely been quitting too soon and that I've regretted it on my last few runs, and that if I just leaned into enjoying this sensation, I would have the experience and not the regrets.

I mean, the alternative was to work on a test plan for our thumbnail-generation service!

Of course, it definitely helped that 13 miles is half a marathon. I don't know if I would have had this motivation for the number 13 otherwise; I would have stopped at 12 or maybe 12.25.

The biggest problem is my left hamstring. It was *really* unhappy after my last run and for two days afterwards, and it was *really* unhappy after this run. I actually went and lay down for about 15 minutes after this run, learning from last time that a bit of lying down goes a long way. I showered and tried sitting down at the computer on the sofa bed, but my hamstring didn't like it, so I figured instead of tightening my glutes some more, I would lie down flat for a bit. And that did seem to help a little, but I'm not sure if I should be running beyond 13 miles until I solve this. In fact, one of my pep talks today was that this might be my last long run for a while, and if so, I should make the most of it.

I'll keep an eye on it and see. It had mostly recovered the last 2 days (by which I mean back to normal levels of pain), which is why I went for it again. Cross your fingers it does the same thing again!

ETA: Oh, and my knees were 100%, not a twinge in sight. No stiffness, no discomfort, not even when I switched to walking for my cooldown. They were as strong as they've ever been, I couldn't even tell which one has been the injured one for a year. \o/ I've been very diligently sleeping with my legs extended, sometimes even at the cost of sleep, and it's paying off.