Several weeks ago I wrote my recap of the San Francisco Marathon. While I stand by what I said in that post, I want to expand on that and delve into some of the things that I have pondered in response to the marathon and the training leading up to it. [I wrote this essay approximately two weeks after the marathon.]

After three to four years of constant growth, I set my sights on the Boston Marathon but then injury came along and a plateau that has lasted for nearly three years, a plateau that I cannot seem to break out of. I expected the growth to continue, yet, clearly, growth has eluded me.

I had good reason to expect the growth to continue. I reached the pinnacle of my fitness, so far, in the spring of 2015 with my half marathon PR at Hilton Head and my marathon PR at Rome, a mere 4 minutes off a BQ time. When I finally acknowledge the injury, the distal hamstring strain, I learned that poor form lead to the injury. Over the next several months through physical therapy, functional training and even ART, active release therapy, I worked on strengthening and correcting my form. I thought, for sure, that this was the missing piece and the faster times would come. They did not. However, I do not think that these changes caused the slow down. I hypothesize that if a few other things had not happened that the form fixes would most definitely have propelled me over the BQ edge.

Summer 2016 brought many major life changes. I have talked before about several aspects of the transition back to teaching but not about how that affected running. That March, I ran the Tobacco Road Marathon as a way to prove that I could come back from the injury. I ran with no goals. Despite the hot weather, I performed better than I thought I would. Months later, once I got the teaching job, I knew, or thought I knew, that I would have no time or energy for marathon training, at least not a fall marathon. I decided on the Hilton Head Marathon the following spring. When Mom decided to run it with me, it was all too easy to decide to take it “easy” and run every training run and the race with Mom. That marks the start of my settling for the status quo.

I love running with Mom. She motivates me, encourages me, and helps me get through the long slogs. What happened when I decided to run with her for every run is that I lost my drive, not because of her but because of me. I decided to take it easy and leave the challenging stuff for another day since easy running is, well, easy. For all my competitive nature, I have a strong lazy streak too. I gave into that lazy streak and did it so often that laziness became a habit. After Hilton Head when I registered for Chicago, again my head had the goal of a BQ time, something that, with a little bit of head-down focused effort, might have been achievable.

My tendency towards laziness became a tendency towards self-sabatoge. I found a plan that I could modify but did not stick with the workouts, especially the long runs. Time after time, I nixed the workout portion of the long run in favor of “just getting it done.” Those workouts help push the muscles to the point where they break a little and in so doing, become stronger. Thus, my performance at Chicago, especially with the warmer than expected weather, surprised me not at all. I started to realize then that something wasn’t working. I needed a change.

Since I already wrote about my decision to get a coach again, I will not rehash that here, except to add that upon further reflection at the end of this cycle, I think that my decision to get a coach touched on only a small part of the root issue. The root issue is my increasing tendency towards laziness. As I described in training week recaps, my mental stamina had much to be desired. All too often, when things got hard I gave myself permission to give in, to jog it home. That plagued San Francisco training.

Before I blame my laziness for the entirety of my poor performance in San Francisco, I need to analyze a few other things that contributed and that will likely continue to contribute. One, my body performs poorly in hot and humid weather. I have known this since I started running eight years ago. This summer poured on the trouble. I sweat so much more than I thought a person ever could; sweat literally poured off me like it came from a faucet. Several of my runs turned into massive struggle-fests. For example, the only way I could fathom getting through the last 30 minutes of a three hour long run was to break it into intervals of one minute walking, four minutes running, no where near the expected pace for the run. There’s a reason that states in the south do not hold marathons in the summer. I had forgotten that when I ran the San Francisco Marathon before, the America’s Cup pushed race day ahead approximately six weeks earlier, into early June, quite a difference in training weather. Two, every marathon since Tobacco Road, I have run since I started teaching, since I jumped back into a much heavier workload. I learned, gradually, the sort of toll the workload, stress, and emotional investment takes on my performance. Honestly, this toll made the tendency towards laziness much easier for me. Part of this is justified. Teaching takes a lot, especially when one wants to do it well. I still need to take that toll seriously but at the same time not use it as an excuse. Too often, I excused myself under the guise of being realistic.

Going forward, I know that I will never again train for a mid to late summer marathon with the goal of running fast, no matter where the marathon takes place as long as I live in the South. That’s just crazy talk. I also will continue to focus on clean eating and getting a lot more sleep. [I have done this fairly consistently since writing this essay originally and it seems to be making a huge difference.] As much as I hate to admit it, I am no longer a teenager or twenty something. My body needs more sleep.

In the end, I realized that I had lost my love of running, my desire to improve and get stronger. I had stopped celebrating my successes, no matter their size. That’s what I want to focus on as I progress in my life as a teacher and an athlete. I even want to dedicate more time to strength training and overall fitness. (I have the Crossfit Games to thank for that recent motivation.) Further, deeper reflection leaves me feeling more positive and much more encouraged.