Hi, I've been training for my first HM for some time now as I want to give myself the best chance. For the last couple of months I've been running one long run of 18km weekly or fortnightly at the weekends and three to four 7km runs during the week as short ones.
However last week during my long run I had a fall around 16km. Nothing serious, slight stiffness to side and knee but felt ok. I decided to rest this week and had only one recovery run of about 5km which was great.
Today I decided to run 19km as I had a good rest but by around the 10km mark my body seemed to have given up. So unlike last week I listened to my body & walked a little. (I've not had to walk on a run since March). Anyway when I tried to jog again my body had other plans and I just couldn't do it. I ran two step and despite my mind saying keep going my body just started walking. I had to call hubby to come & get me.
Has anyone else experienced this. Any advice on getting back on track to my weekly long distances? This has never happened to me before.
Written by
Mya2019
Half Marathon
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9 Replies
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Do you think you did some damage with the fall? Or, more likely, is it that the fall shook you up and your mind is telling your body not to risk doing it again. Maybe ease back in with some shorter runs for a week or so. I think any kind of accident, whether or not you hurt yourself, can drain your confidence. I had a knee injury earlier in the year (nothing to do with running) and by the time I got back into running, I had lost belief in my ability ever to run as far as I did.
When is your half marathon? It's hard to tell what went wrong without knowing your training plan. Are you making sure you have lower mileage weeks from time to time to offset the long runs? Have you possibly overtrained? What fuelling are you using on your long runs? There are so many variables but remember we all get those unexplained bad runs too sometimes, so try not to let it bother you too much ...have a few days rest and hopefully you will feel back on top form again soon. Which Half are you doing btw? Good luck🙂
Hopefully this is your head not your body. Even though you thought your head was telling you to carry on, I bet there was a larger part of your head resisting. I had one really awful long run when training for my first HM. I scaled things back a bit to get some enjoyable runs in. I then formulated a plan to walk and drink at specific points in my run (coinciding with the water stations in my planned event). The walks were short - just for a drink (fortified with carbs and electrolyes, another psychological boost) - but those were the rules! It made a huge difference. Suddenly my run was broken into much shorter chunks. My next attempt at the distnce was a big success! I've stuck to this approach, but you may not need to. You just need to trick your mind!
Ealing gets great write ups and is quite a close one for me - look forward to reading your race report if you do one for us 😀. Good luck with your next few runs. Keep posting here and let us know how you get on 🙂
It's a pain in the arse when it happens but don't dwell on it. Whatever it was may never recur. It could be one thing or a combo of things. File it under "crappy runs".
Thank you everyone for your comments. I took a bit of advice from you all.
This week I took it slow and done 3 x 5km runs. I fuelled up - making sure I ate well last night and I've just returned from completing a 19km run in 2hrs 15mins. Feeling very happy with that
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