Today I made an extremely hard decision for me. Mostly, this is hard because it's always important for me to finish what I start and to hit the goals that I want to hit. But today I decided I am going to run the half-marathon instead of the full marathon. Somehow this gives me a sigh of relief but also makes me have to fight the feeling of being a failure.
During the course of my last 14 weeks of marathon training I have had two-three day bouts of the stomach flu and about a month of difficulty with taking deep breaths before and after runs and before going to sleep at night.
I finally went to the doc and got diagnosed with asthma. It's likely not even exercise induced (I still have to go get some breathing tests done) It's quite possibly full on asthma. The nurse told me that running 26.2 miles is not worth collapsing on the finish line. I didn't really want to listen because I've worked hard on this goal.
My running partner and good friend also got taken out with a bum ankle. Today her physical therapist told her she needed to switch to the half. I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders when I really considered this option.
The first mile of every run, I feel like my lungs completely shut down. The inhaler helps but I do find that towards the 12-13 mile mark, it just feels like I'm done..completely out of gas. I've tried to correct this with proper fueling, proper water, anything. It hasn't seemed to work.
For me, this whole weight loss journey has been about understanding my limitations and being ok with them. I think I am finally learning the difference of when I need to push my body a little more because I'm emotionally limiting myself and on the flip side, learning how to slow down when my body is saying "no more."
So on May 5, I will be running 13.1 miles and try to PR rather than running 26.2 miles and just trying to finish. I feel like a weight has been lifted.
No comments:
Post a Comment