The Fall Training Season has Begun

I  believe yesterday marked the "unofficial" beginning of the fall training season.  I say this for two reasons...

First, when I woke up yesterday morning and looked out my window (we live in a 12th floor condo), I saw probably 60 people gathered below.  I was actually so confused that I went back to check the time. I thought it may have been 2am and those people were just now leaving the club.  Nope. It was 6am and those people were runners with fuel belts, reflective gear, and a pace group.  I'm pretty sure it was the Galloway group and this morning marked day one of training.

Second, so MANY runners!!!! There were so many runners out and about on the street yesterday.  I felt like I had my very own training group, and if we wanted to go separate ways, my new training partner was just a block ahead. It was great. When I started my run, I didn't really have a route picked out so when I ran into someone who was going my pace, I secretly followed them and learned some cool new routes for next week.  It was fun.

Seeing all of this yesterday got me so excited about the upcoming race season.  Every year about this time I start remembering last training season (the cooler weather, watching football after my run, later sunrises) and I can't help but get even more pumped for this fall's marathon.  But, as I'm sure many people who train for races can tell you, not all of these memories are great.  I have memories of hobbling along after a 20 miler, miserable ice baths, cold and dark morning runs, and hot showers that never seemed to be warm enough. Yet I can't wait to do it all over again.  What is wrong with us runners?  Perhaps this quote from John Samsel sums it up best, "It's not that we enjoy running. Running is really not fun. It hurts. But once it's done, you enjoy having run." Yep, I think that's exactly what it is.  It's the feeling you have after the run (minus the blisters and soreness).

And of course I have my own not so fun running story to start off the training season.  Yesterday I was suppose to run 14 miles.  I had a great time for the first 7.5 miles stalking people and running new places.  However, there were two problems that I quickly became aware of going into the second half of my run. First, I started out much faster than I should have.  Second, by mile 8 my clothes were so weighted down from my sweating (insert apology for TMI here), it was ridiculous.  I actually weighed them on the scale when I got home ( a sports bra and a pair of shorts), and they weighed 2 pounds!! Perhaps that explained the extremely parched feeling I had for my last four miles.  Needless to say, two miles to go and I threw in the towel.  I was so hot, soaked, chafed, and thirsty I couldn't take it anymore.  Normally I would have been extremely upset with myself.  However, thankfully the day before I read this article about being kind to our bodies, so I chalked it up to poor preparation and went on with my day.

Then Sunday morning came along and I couldn't help but want to make up those last two miles.  Who cares that my 10 year class reunion was last night and we got home super late and were super tired? Were my legs sore? Absolutely! But why should that stop me?  I welcomed round two.  But then I remembered what PCinSTL tweeted to me a few days ago - take at least one complete day off, eat well, and rest.  Okay, fine. I'll rest but you better believe come Monday morning, I'll be ready to kick my second week of training off with a few extra miles.

So to all of you out there who have started your fall training season, best of luck! Sure, you will have bad runs, chafed nipples, salty snot and blisters.  It sucks but being the crazy runners that we are, I'll see you back out there the next week to do it all over again because this is what we do...

Happy Trails!