Disappointment

Yesterday was my birthday. I started my birthday by getting up early to go run. And it went very, very badly.

I left home as soon as it started to get light out (no running in the dark when I'm on my own), and headed out to run 2 miles before the Komen Race for the Cure 5K. I could tell things weren't going to go well less than a mile into the run. I just felt awful. I honestly haven't felt that bad since our very first long run. I felt nauseous, I had an awful side cramp, and nothing seemed to feel right.

On another note, it was interesting running along the route for the race as things were getting set up.

Anyway, I got through roughly the first mile before having to stop and catch my breath. The second mile was pretty rough - I had to walk bits of it, and I was really happy to make it to the staging area for the race so I could sit down and try to regroup.

Of course, I then had over an hour of standing around waiting for the 5K to start. I started to feel a little better, but my body had gone into recovery mode, and I started to get the awful feeling in my stomach that comes on when I don't get something into my stomach after my run.

Eventually, all of the race hoopla started. It was pretty interesting to me, since I've never participated in a race like this one. There were so many people there! We listened to several speeches, and they released birds. It was pretty. Then they started the family 1K, followed by the competitive runners.

I was in the non-competitive running group, and we started about 10 minutes later than we were supposed to. It was so weird to start out in the middle of a huge group of people. I was near the start of the group, so that was good because things got moving fairly easily. It was bad because tons of people passing you doesn't feel great.

I felt ok at the start. I set my pace and tried not to let the people passing me cause me to speed up. I mostly just tried to take in the feeling of the run. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for my body to just start shutting down. I was miserable. I'm sure I looked awful as I tried to push myself to run as much as possible.

I really wanted to finish the run, so I just kept pushing myself. I did have to start walking bits of it, and I was really frustrated by that. By the time the finish line was in sight, I was running and walking almost the same amount. I managed to run across the line, and I sat down under a tree to try to quiet all the different parts of me that were complaining.

The original plan was to run the 1.5 miles back to my apartment after the run to finish out the 6+ miles assigned for Saturday. Unfortunately, there was just no way that a run back was going to happen - I ended up having a terrible time just trying to walk back.

Seriously, it was a bad morning, and I collapsed when I finally got home. I was really, really depressed about the failure. After the high that came from a strong 6.5 miles last week, having a run go as badly as my first long run just hurt. I started to worry about my ability to get through this process for the first time in a while.

So, I spent some time going through what I think went wrong. Honestly, I think the problems all probably stem from being sick the last part of the week. I mean:
1. I was still sick. Bodies don't work as well when they are fighting off germs.
2. Because of being sick, I skipped 2 weekly runs - so I hadn't run since Tuesday. There's definitely a reason that our schedule has us running as often as we do.
3. My nutrition had been really, really poor since I started to get sick. I wasn't eating well, or much, so I wasn't even close to properly fueled.

Of course, the break in the middle of the run didn't help at all, either.

Still, it hurt my confidence to have a long run go that badly. Especially since we have an 8 mile long run coming up next Saturday. I guess it's back to running tomorrow. Hopefully it goes better.

I woke up this morning with cold symptoms even worse than last week, so I'm just hoping I get healthy soon.