Admitting I have hit the wall, making and adjusting plans accordingly #Running #Training

Dear James, Daniel and Emily

Sunday's Run

After yet another brutal, inconsistent long slow run I have come to a realization: the marathon just isn't in the cards this year. For Practical, Mental, and Physical reasons, fortunately I won't lose any money or anything. Here is how it breaks down by category:

Practical Reasons

• Training Schedule is too tough to maintain with my family life right now. With Kim working weekends I have to be full time weekend parent. Which is fine with me. But when I try to do a long run (2+ hours) it means that is time the kids are home unsupervised. 
• It also takes me away from doing things with the kids, because I am focused on these long runs.
• And it wipes me out, so if I do the long run, it is hard for me to do anything else the rest of the day, which makes it hard to get things done.
• I spent a lot of time trying to arrange the schedule to accommodate our vacation plans, and that is just plain crazy.
• I kept worrying about how to keep my iPhone battery going for those long runs, should I buy an extended battery? If so would I need new head phones?
• I was spending a lot of my time before and during my runs trying to figure out how to extend my routes to match my training plan.

Mental Reasons

• I think that 2-2.5 hours is just my limit right now.Everything was just about perfect yesterday: new hydration pack, basically flat course, well timed bio break. And I still lost focus and will when I got to that 2 hour mark (more or less).
• Given that that is my wall, and that I show no signs of really pushing past it, I just have to accept it.

Physical Reasons

• My legs hurt from these long runs, no matter how much hydration and stretching.
• Even with the great shoes my feet start to ache (not long term, I still love the shoes and hate to think how my feet would feel on my old minimalist shoes.)

Emotional Reasons

• This is the biggie: it just isn't fun. These long runs have become an emotional drag. I don't feel refreshed when I finish. And if the running isn't fun it just isn't worth the work.

For all of those reasons I have decided to stop the training plan for the marathon and focus on my Grand Prix races, and running Half Marathons. I want to run the ADT Half as usual. And I am pondering running the new one on the 4th of July. Maybe another one in August, we will see.