It has begun! Nearly a month of dealing with a terrible chest infection, I have been cleared to run again. It feels good to be outdoors; feeling the fresh air, running around the local area, having your body remember what muscles are used in running and how hard it is to run after such a long time being off. I had to remind myself (more than a few times) to slow down as it is the first run back nearly a month and its okay to go even slower than usual as the body has to build up the endurance and strength again. This made me reflect on what I need to do next within my marathon training plan: modify and adapt the plan when needed.
I like following a plan, it gives me the motivation to keep training, even if I don’t want to complete a session or I’m feeling fatigued from work, the plan keeps me going. I always do my best to stick to a plan, even when I am returning from illness. If I see that I need to run a long run on a Saturday, I stick to it, there’s a track session on Tuesday: do it. Club run on Wednesday, I’m on it. Gym session on Thursday, check. Everything on my marathon plan I tell myself that I must do it. Nevertheless, I was told otherwise it’s not wise to follow everything on your plan when returning from an illness. I had to slow it down and take certain sessions out to be able to recover and get back into running. An example of this is taking out the track sessions, so that I may focus on my endurance and to give myself an extra rest day to recover from my illness completely. I also have to remind myself that this is my first marathon ever and no matter what I do, at the end of the race, it will be a Personal Best time regardless.
I’ve have concluded that training for a marathon is no easy task, you must be prepared to give the time to marathon training, learn to slow down the pace in longer runs (especially when they surpass the half marathon mark), think about what you eat/fuel before/after a run, the gear you wear and most importantly your own well-being overall. If I am not feeling so great, it’s better to listen to my body than try to continue training through the illness or else I could end up even worse than I was before and lose even more time training because I did not listen to my body.
Slowly but surely I will continue to run using the club to run on those cold dark winter nights, run with my close friends who keep pushing me to complete the distance and use the gym/swimming pool to help strengthen the muscles used in running. So far coming back into running has been a great feeling. I am hoping at the feeling will last as I go into longer miles.
