weekly check-in

[ilanarama]

Happy Monday! Your inspirational quote for the day comes from Paavo Nurmi, who won 9 gold and 3 silver medals for Finland in middle- and long-distance running events in the 1920, 1924, and 1928 Olympics:

"Mind is everything: muscle--pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind."

How was your week, and what do you have planned for this week? And what kind of mental games and tricks do you use to stay on track when running is hard?

Comments

[ilanarama]

I am excited to say that I have been cleared by my PT to do a very small amount of running. She thought that my 3-miler a couple of weeks ago was just too much too soon, and that I should avoid pavement for a while, but that I am ready to run again. So last Thursday I did my 4-mile "fast hike" loop that I have been doing a couple of mornings a week in lieu of running, but added in 3 5-minute intervals of slow jogging separated by 5 minutes of running, and it seemed to go fine. This morning I did four intervals of running, and the ankle was tight but didn't hurt, so I'm feeling really encouraged. Oh, and I spooked a deer (and vice versa)!

My mental tricks:

When I am running a long run (or a marathon) I compare what's left to go to the routes I typically run in training. Eight miles sounds like a lot but when I tell myself, "it's just like running up to the Fall River stop sign and back!" it doesn't sound so far. The last 4 miles of a marathon I tell myself it's just the short loop around the river path. And so on.

I hate intervals the most, and I usually want to quit way before I'm done. So I bargain with myself: "you have to do at least two more and then you don't have to do the last two, okay?" But then after I do two I scold myself for being a quitter so I do the last two anyway.

[sophinisba]

That's great that you're getting to run again!