Wednesday, January 16, 2013

The Red Line

If you are a runner and you have a Facebook, then you need to like Hal Higdon's Marathon page. His status updates appear on my home page every day and I love reading his tip of the day. Some of his tips are specifically for running or training for a marathon, but most of his tips are useful for anyone running any distance. Yesterday's tip of the day was the perfect tip for where I am in my training right now. Here's what it said:

"TIP OF THE DAY: Find your red line: Through trial and error determine the point (usually miles run) at which point you become overtrained and/or injured. Then back your training down to a point below that red line. Sometimes you can nudge this point upward by pushing on it gently, but everyone has a red line beyond which they get hurt. Find yours!"

This quote was extremely appropriate yesterday because I have reached my red line and never even realized it. I completed 3 half marathons last spring and spent the summer running shorter races. I wanted to give my body time to recover from all of the mileage that I put in for several months before that. I began to focus on speed a bit more at the end of the season because I wanted to be in great shape for coaching cross country. At the end of the summer, I ran a 10K that I have run before and it was probably one of the worst races that I have ever run. I began feeling sick near mile 3 and even had to stop to walk for a bit during mile 4. While I was walking, I wondered why I was having such a difficult time in this race when I had run 3 races that were double the length in just the past few months. I struggled to make it to the finish and felt like my legs could hardly move when I crossed the finish line. It was a pretty hot day out, but I have run in races much hotter than that. I probably would not have made it to the finish that day if the race had been longer and that's when I realized that there was a problem.

I continued running through the fall, but there were days that I struggled to join in the workouts with my cross country team. After the season finished, I began focusing on speed work since I had a month before my 30 week training plan was to begin. It was discovered a month later that I had a hiatal hernia, which was what was causing me so much trouble running. There were days that I had terrible reflux during a run and I felt l like I was going to throw up in the middle of a run. There were times that I even had to cut my runs much shorter than I expected. This was part of the reason why I took some time off from running in December. When January came, I was more than ready to get back into running again since the problem was now discovered and being treated. I was still having some trouble when I was running, but I was able to get my mileage in still. I took a look at my times from the past few weeks and realized why I might still be having trouble. Whenever I ran with a group of people, my pace was slower than 10 minute miles and I felt great during those runs. All of my solo runs were well under 10 minutes most days, which is a pace that my body is still fairly new to.

It occurred to me that my faster paces might just be my red line. I tested out this hypothesis today with a 4 mile run. I completed the run in 39:21, which is a 9:50 min/mi pace. When I was done running, I felt great and even felt like I could have run a few more miles. Running the slower pace made such a huge difference today. I do not need to worry about my speed or my pace. I am training for a marathon. I need to focus on my distance and preparing my body for such a huge race. I am finally starting to believe that I might actually be able to do this, but I need to remember to take care of my body too. I am going to continue running at slower paces because I should not be reaching the red line in week 12. I have 18 more weeks to get my body ready to conquer 26.2!

128.35 miles complete in 21:20:37 and only 129 days until conquering 26.2 miles!

No comments:

Post a Comment