Today is the last day of our Quince Dias vacation from school. We have done so much in the past few weeks and had tons of fun traveling, spending time and sharing adventures with family and friends, but I’m actually feeling ready to get back into the teaching routine (more or less).
Ross and I started out our last day of vaca this morning with a sweaty, tortuous, hilly 5 mile run (we deserved to suffer after taking almost a month off from any sort of distance training) and we just came home to make breakfast. Switching things up a little from the traditional Costa Rican carb heavy breakfast we made scrambled eggs and Banana Vanilla Soy protein smoothies, so good!
The hard run this morning made me think about how much I miss my long, slow distance runs. In 2006, I trained for and ran the Boston Marathon.
This blog is about the training. I’ll write about the actual race another time. Marathon Training: It was so hard to get myself out of bed weekend mornings to run 10-20 miles, but once I was up and getting it done I really enjoyed myself. They key with those long runs is to take it SLOW (hence, LSD), so that your breathing is normal and so you can hold a conversation and/or think about things other than the pain/discomfort. I’ve had a lot of life revelations and revaluations happen during LSD runs. They kind of go against everything I had believed about running before (it has to hurt, you have to be panting and red-faced the entire time, or else it just doesn’t count) LSD runs aren’t about burning calories (which you do) or winning first place. I finished Boston just under 4 hours 30 min, I was hoping to beat 4 hours since my half-marathons had all been under 2 hours, but it doesn’t always work that way. LSD runs will allow you to learn more about your body and your mind, and you will be amazed to discover how strong both those things can be.
For now, I’m just not really able to enjoy LSD runs here for many reasons (heat, hills, scary stray dogs everywhere who will attack, intense thunder storms everyday during rainy season which is now through October, lack of running buddies in Costa Rica, etc).I’ve been liking my gym/weights routine and the shorter runs and track sprint workouts, but this girl is really a distant runner at heart.
Who is down for marathon training with me when I get back???
Balanced in Boston 