Half Training - Week 6

For the past month, I've been sharing updates on my half-marathon training for the Gasparilla race I'm running this coming February (you can catch up on week 3 and week 4).

When I started writing this week's blog, I was feeling incredibly discouraged. All of last week, I did my training runs on very little sleep and my body was definitely feeling it; between side cramps and needing more water breaks than usual, I felt like an amateur. My first thought for this post was who is going to want to read a post about feeling less than adequate in training for a half-marathon?

Then I realized: I would.

I follow a decent amount of blogs, most of which are young females in their twenties who live healthy, athletic lives similar to my own. A lot of those blogs only show the good stuff, the "I went out to run 5 miles and felt so great I ran 8 instead". So what about the people who are like me? The ones who are having rough weeks when they feel defeated and want to give up? This post is for them.

So, laying it all out there, here were my thoughts as I ran in week 6 of training:

1. Why did I think I would enjoy running 13.1 miles when I'm hating the 5 and 6 mile runs I'm doing now?
2. Is it over yet?
3. Did I burn enough calories in Friday's run to justify the doughnut I ate Saturday morning? (read: Ate the doughnut anyways. Twas delicious. Thanks Vee.)

While last week's runs left much to be desired, I know from experience that I can do this. Putting week 6 out of my head, I went into this week feeling renewed and (surprisingly) looking forward to my Monday morning run. And it was awesome. Moral of the story? Don't let one bad week convince you that you don't have what it takes to run the race. And that you should always eat the doughnut.