Running Rituals

If you are anything like me, a good workout makes you feel like you can conquer the world. . . . . But a bad workout can make you feel pretty disappointed!!! A bad run can make you question your ability to maintain your focus & drive! I'm on a constant review of what affects my runs: what I eat, how much water I drink, the weather, my sleep, wearing platform heels, how many miles I have on my shoes, how faithful i am with foam rolling between runs. . . Etc. I think I speak for a lot of runners when I say routine is everything. . . . . Especially for long runs! My diet is a HUGE factor in my running!

We have spaghetti every single Friday night before a  long run!
Thankfully it's a meal he'll eat. . . . He's been know to buck the concept of dinner time!!!

The night before a long run I have some fairly normal routines! I prefer to be ready for the morning so I'm not late meeting Angie & I don't forget anything vital to a long run!!

Water bottles are filled & put in the fridge  for  the morning!!!

Before I go to bed, which happened to be 7:45 last night because I was exhausted, I plugged my Garmin watch in, foam rolled, made sure my clothes were out, filled my fuel belt with gu and money for more Gatorade and put our bananas by my fuel belt so I wouldn't forget them!!! It's honestly more work preparing for a long run than packing stuff for my 3 year old to go somewhere for the day! Geeeez! I woke up at 4:30 this morning (which is sleeping in a 1/2 hour for me!) and folded some laundry, ate my yogurt, got dressed, put on my body glide, packed everything in the car & left with plenty of time to get where we were meeting! We planned on attending an hour long talk on "toning your mind" that one of our fitness trainers was putting on at a local fitness center. . . . . So we met there to run before we went to that!! I sat & played on Facebook for a bit since I was early! As soon as Angie pulled up in her matching minivan (yes, we are THAT cool!) I got out & realized I didn't have my Garmin watch! I almost started to cry. . . . And I probably would have if Angie wasn't the BEST running buddy in the entire world! She said, let's go get it! We were about 10 minutes away so that put us starting about 25 minutes later than planned!!! Angie totally understands the "need" for always running wi the watch! My stats would have been skewed by not having that 18 mile run recorded which would be down right devastating! I also would have been asking her every 35 seconds what our pace was & how much further we had to run. . . . .she would have killed me after 2 miles. . .so I think she preferred a little later start & cutting it close to the seminar time than having me run with no watch!!!!! Needless to say, my rituals failed me today!!! On the positive side, we had an extra 20 minutes of chatting and with less effort because we weren't running up hills! Here is a quick photo of us around mile 12 or 13 . . . . We ran into our "blog photographer" (my friend & co-worker) while she was out walking her dog Blossom!

We literally made it back in time to grab our chocolate milk (Angie put some on ice for us) and our bananas (I brought those) and head in to listen to our instructor!!! Unfortunately we didn't have time to stretch & foam roll so we quick got that in afterwards before we got back in the car!!! I could tell while walking out to the car that I didn't stretch & it is an important part of running injury free so we really focus on it!!

We had a pretty hilly route so it was a challenging run, but worth is because we are running in the Full Moon 1/2 marathon next week which is a super hilly route!! Despite my inability to be organized and forgetting my watch as well as needing a bathroom 2 miles in and almost peeing my pants (poor Angie had to run with me in public while I looked like a toddler doing the potty dance), we had a good run and finished 18 miles by 9:15ish this morning!!!! Now we can rest & relax today & tomorrow as part of our recovery routine which usually includes some sort of sweet treat . . . . And spending some good quality weekend time with our kids. . . .which is precious time for us both . . . . Even when they're crabby!