Stupid rookie mistakes...

My flight to Israel was scheduled to depart from Newark Airport at 4:05PM today, which meant I needed to leave my apartment around 12:30. I am very anal about travelling and I need to get to the airport very early - I would rather wait in the airport than wait at home. Once I get in travel mode I can't seem to accomplish anything else - so I might as well be in the airport.

Anyway, I wanted to get a run in before I left, knowing that I wouldn't have time to run on Friday. I know...I know...too much running in too short a time - 4 runs in 3.5 days - I am overdoing it - but I am addicted, what can I do. Coming off the high of my fast treadmill 5k the problems were only beginning. Anyway - I got out the door a little after 8, leaving me just over 4 hours to get my run in, cool down, shower, finish packing and take care of the few things I had to finish up before I left for a week. Needless to say - I should have been smart enough and realized that I didn't have enough time to do all these things - and just accepted a little bit of defeat and called off the run. But I couldn't (I am still learning my limits). So, problem #1 - running too much without enough rest, problem #2 - I didn't stretch enough. As I have mentioned on this blog before I think I have IT band issues. Ever since I started stretching, while I have had mild aches during the run, in general I have been without any major issue - no pain after the runs. So I think those stretches have been working. Anyway, I didn't stretch properly before this run.

The only good thing about the run was that I finally got to try out my Garmin Forerunner 301 with the chest strap. The chest strap picked up a HR off and on - though the program afterwards didn't show so much drop out. Now I can finally pace myself, which leads to problem #3 - I totally did not pace myself - I was running 8:15 miles, something I had never done outside before and each time I thought I had slowed down I didn't. I was huffing and puffing by mile 2 and had to stop for about 10 seconds after mile 2 and a more than that during mile 3 (I didn't stop the Garmin timer for this one). By the end of the 4th mile I had been rocked. I was sore everywhere, my calves, my hams, my left knee. I was really upset. I had a pace of 8:15 - my splits were:

1st mile: 7:38
2nd mile: 8:03
3rd mile: 7:41
4th mile: 10:32 (looks like I walked about .15 mile).

I was mentally rocked - I totally hit a wall and it was just a really horrible run. In fact I am pretty embarassed to post about it - but part of my reason for this post is to learn from my mistakes. I was not ready for the pace that I pushed myself at, I didn't prepare properly and because of that I had my first really horrible run. The picture is a little off - but I used Sports Tracks to create it and exported it to Google Earth, need Danny to show me how to edit the path. GPS isn't perfect, far from it, but I still really like my Forereunner 301.

Anyway, now I am in Israel and have a 7-8 miler planned for Sunday. I left a couple messages for Mal James - I was hoping he might have some suggestions for a good run in Jerusalem - but I haven't heard back from him. If any of you have an e-mail address for him could you drop him a line and ask him to contact me - or if you could drop me his e-mail address. My goal for Sunday is a pace no faster than 9:30 for at least the first 6 miles, if on the last mile I want to pick it up a little - that should be ok. Sunday is about endurance, another step on the path of getting myself to tolerating a half.

More to come from Israel - I am going to post another soon - just a walk from my parent's apartment to my brother's apartment - it's so cool what the forerunner does.