They Must Be Crazy

I’m now officially a co-coach for the half marathon clinic…formerly the marathon/half marathon clinic but nobody signed up for the full marathon. I have no idea what I’m doing and as we started I couldn’t help but think, “What were they thinking? Are they crazy?” But here I am, and fortunately I have an experienced co-coach who is happy to take charge. So I will just take this as a learning experience and do my best.

But at the same time I feel such a weight of responsibility. We’ve done two 3ks so far, and in both of them I was like a mother goose keeping all my goslings in a line. Is everyone doing okay? Is everyone feeling alright? Is everyone together?

Our runs were on Tuesday and Wednesday. Both runs were lots of fun. Short and sweet! I do quite enjoy the 3k distance in the evenings. Get in, get it done, get home. And it’s a lovely group of ladies, which means lots of amiable chatter. That being said, the run on Wednesday night was also a very tough mental challenge. Why? Because we had freezing rain the day before, making the trails slick with black ice. That, plus the running after dark made it difficult to see the shine from the ice. I had a headlight, but it only helped minimally. I slipped a few times and had to really slow down my game. By the end of that 3k I was mentally exhausted! It reminded me of when I used to trail run, in that you have to be constantly focused on where you are and your environment.

The really good thing about coaching is that it is going to teach me to really slow down all my runs. Apparently, that’s the way to improve heart-rate training which will improve my overall running fitness. I’m game to try it!

So that was the (more or less) good news. But there is some bad news too... I have my own personal little storm cloud in the midst of this challenge. The storm cloud is in the form of my right knee, which is constantly aggravated on my runs.

I had an ultrasound done this week, which showed a little of this and a little of that...but nothing to account for my knee pain. So, I've been referred to get an MRI. Fingers crossed it’s nothing that will impact on my training...