Bad Run

I know everyone has them, but seriously, I feel my bad runs lately have been outweighing the good ones. Today I experienced another running fail, and I dare say, this is probably the worst one to date. I took 3 days off due to some soreness after Saturday's 12 miler, my knee was feeling fine, but my left calf has been especially tight lately. So not to aggravate it further, I just decided it needed some time to heal and repair itself, I know I have been putting a lot of stress on my body lately with all the running. Well today I got up and was all set to hit the gym full force and do between 5 and 6 miles. As much as I am hating the treadmill lately, at least I know I can knock out a relatively "short" run in a short amount of time and try to distract myself by people watching or watching the TV while I listen to my iPod and fight the mental battle in my head.

But today, it just wasn't happening. When I got to the gym it was more crowded than expected for the time of day, and then I discovered my iPod was dead! I don't know how it went from fully charged in my gym bag on Monday to dead today, I can only figure I left the hold button on so it wouldn't turn on by accident, but maybe that somehow discharged the battery.  I can't run without music. Plus that meant that my Nike+ wasn't going to log my run, not that I necessarily need the Nike+, but I find it highly motivating to keep my mental battle going and pushing me to fight and keep going. I like hearing my pace, and how far I've gone and how far I have left to go. So alas, I got on the treadmill, immediately my left calf was tight and not wanting to cooperate, I walked for 5 minutes, then I started to run, I ran 1 mile. Then I got off and took a bathroom break. I got back on, I walked a bit, ran, walked, ran. I got to 2 miles that time. Then I quit. 3 miles total, in probably about 33 minutes of active time. Slow and dreadful. I wanted to die the entire time. I just couldn't get into it. I tried to watch the TV, I tried to focus on the 70 or 80 year old guy in front of me jogging along at a 6.4 mph pace.

I just couldn't do it. I feel like a giant fail today. I know I shouldn't, and I should be happy I got out there and did anything. But truth be told, I am just so tired of running lately, I want to find excuses not to do it. I'm not going to make 22 miles this week as my training plan has laid out, in fact I will be lucky if I make 18 this week. I want to run races, I really do, in fact I found another 5K to run on base April 2nd and am hoping I can beat my last 5K time and run a sub-30 minute race. But, I want to enjoy running again; zoning out, and running pain-free. I'm hoping that I can just get through the next couple weeks of training, run the half, and then take a nice break from training and just run when and for how long I want to and not based off of some schedule that I feel I must abide by.

The iPod is now on the dock and is not leaving it until I get ready to walk out the door tomorrow morning. I'm going to foam roll in a bit too and hopefully that will relieve some of the tightness in my calf. Hopefully I get over my funk and can run 6 miles tomorrow, we'll see how it goes...