Training excuses and forgiving youself

The heat wave here in Chicago is killing me. Yesterday my schedule called for a 17 miler. I finished about 10 miles. Here are my excuses for doing less than I was supposed to.

1. Heat. Can you say 95 F and humid? And that was at 8:00 am.

2. Water. As a joggler, carrying water is not an option. I am dependant on what I find along the way and the opportunity for water was really limited. I didn’t get any until nearly 4 miles into the run. That was tough in 95 degree weather.

3. Time crunch. I had to leave my house for a softball game at noon, come back and head out to the Cubs game at 3:30 pm. Additionally, I had to work on my blog entries in the morning because I would have no time after the Cubs game. What a terrible game! How can you blow a 5 run lead and give up 2 grand slams in one inning!? Lousy team.

4. Sleep deprivation. Waking up earlier would’ve helped because it may not have been so hot at 6:00 am. At 8:00 am when I started, it was hot. Unfortunately, the night before I was out until 2:00 am. Joggling on 4 hours of sleep is tough.

That means for the week I was 7 miles short of my goal. I will try to make it up during my training next week, but I won’t beat myself up too much over it. When you are training for a marathon, you’ve got to learn to forgive yourself. 10 miles isn’t 17 but it is still a pretty long run.

Remember, no marathon performance was made or broken on one bad training run.