#Marathontrainingfail

Today was a running failure. According to my marathon training schedule, courtesy of About.com, I was supposed to run 12 miles today but sadly, that did not happen. I would like to blame someone/thing/place, but as Charles Jones always says, “no one is a failure until they blame somebody else.” Suffice to say, I don’t want to be a failure so the blame must start with me…

It all started late last evening when, per usual, I mapped out my run on the aptly named site mapmyrun and I had trouble knocking out a good, “fun” 12 miler. I kept switching roads, altering directions as I attempted to play God with the streets of Boston. By the time I went to bed, I thought I had done it. Written on a small shred of paper was a list of road names with directions/instructions to make my morning run superb. You might even say I was excited to run this route which is certainly NOT usual.

So this morning, I was actually pretty eager to get out there. I woke up early so I could start and be done sooner with my 3rd longest run ever–side note, I’ve injuredly completed two half-marathons but none since 2008– and in that regard, I was successful, in completing the 12 miles I was not.

That said, as I started out, I was still pretty eager to test my endurance, spirit, red Gatorade and peanut butter-flavored GU. I even but I did not anticipate missing a few key roads that would alter/crush/destroy my route. The less-than 5 hours of sleep that I got, in part to a frisky but still lovely new kitten, wasn’t an asset but that wasn’t the problem this morning – it was my street sign reading ability.

In my humble opinion, Boston doesn’t do a great job of labeling streets/roads/highways in easy to see ways. If the road signs are even there, they are not where I expect them to and I miss them. At around mile 3, I missed a crucial road that I attempted to circle back to. Instead, I circled back to the wrong road and ran the wrong road for waaaaay too long. It was only then that I circled back again to the correct road but by then my spirits, though not fully crushed, were certainly diminished.

As I finally ran the along the originally planned route on the correct road (Beacon Ave), I tried to make alterations on the fly that would account for the time, distance and energy that the circling back used up but my calculations proved to be incorrect. Once home, I mapped the run I actually ran and it was a mere 10.6 miles.

I guess this IS progress since that is good mileage and I am disappointed by it since I wanted 12, expected 12 and felt like I deserved 12. If you would have asked me six months ago if I’d be training for a marathon, if I’d be excited to have run 10.6 miles or would be waking up around 6am to run – I would have laughed and said funny but no. So, for today and today only, 10.6 is goodish but I still have miles and miles to go.