Tuesday: Mark Miller Dashes my Dreams of a Lazy Marathon

I do not know if you have noticed that I am only running three days a week in preparation for the Boston Marathon.  I have my whole checkerboard workout schedule that ensures that I am running no back to back days.  I am being uber careful to avoid injury and get my sleep.

Monday evening, I had everything ready, I set my alarm at an ear splitting decibel and prepared to get to the track early so that I could ask Mark a few questions.  As my luck would have it, however, Baby G has stopped sleeping through the night as he is growing and honestly my body must be producing gallons of breast milk every day, but that is another conversation.

So, though I had a 5:00 AM wake up call, I was up to feed Baby G at 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM.  It was bitter and I really did not feel I was in my right mind.  I thought about skipping track workout all together, but here is the rub.  It is not as if staying home would have bought me any sleep.  Baby G went back down to sleep at 5:15 AMish and my older would have been up a bit before 6:00 AM.  It was a lose/ lose situation.  If I wanted more sleep, the best option would be to get in my car and drive to track practice and sleep in my car in the parking lot like a vagrant.

While my husband is as helpful as is possible, I find that if I am in my home, someone is always yelling "mommy".  Mommy seems to be able to do it better for whatever reason.  Maybe, if I became super irresponsible and undependable, everyone would quit calling my name.  ANYWAY, all that to say that I went to track practice.

At track practice, I got in a mile warm up, before hopping on my chance to talk to Mark Miller.  I explained my whole situation to him: newborn, Boston Marathon, running three days a week, blah, blah, blah.  No doubt, I was not very concise and I blathered on about all sorts of things that poor Mark Miller does not give a rats about, but he was a kind listener.  After hearing my whole deal, he said these words to me which I did not want to hear: you can run three days a week.  You will be able to run the marathon, but you will not improve and you will be lucky to maintain you time.  You have to add in some more runs.

With those sad words, I betook myself to the track in my lululemon tights and began the workout.  Workout as follows:

• mile warm up
• 800 meters of stride outs
• 8 x 400 meters @ 1:30
• jog 400 meters in between.  I actually jogged 200 meters in between in an effort to finish the workout
• mile cool down

This ended up being 5.5 miles for me.  I was thrilled, but let me just tell you that I spent the rest of the day gimping around just exhausted.  I refused to even think about running any more than I am.  I am going to think about that tomorrow, Scarlett O'Hara style.