My long run this week in preparation for the 50K was 16 miles. Normally, I would do this run on Saturday or Sunday morning, but I had LASIK planned for Friday morning, which means 3 days of no workouts.
This meant running Friday morning before LASIK - which ended up being the perfect distraction! One of my favorite things to do on long runs is to listen to a captivating audio book. I vary the topics from fiction to business (and everything in between) and recent favorites include The Help and Outliers and I just finished Ken Follet's The Fall of Giants.
I am always sad when a good audio book ends, especially long ones that I have been listening to for weeks. The characters almost become friends and I miss them when the story is over. I finished The Fall of Giants earlier this week so I was at a loss as to what to listen to for my long run this week, but knew I needed something other than music to distract me for 2.5 hours or I would stress about the surgery.
I ended up choosing Tina Fey's Bossypants and it was the absolute perfect distraction. The book made me laugh out loud on my run and I didn't spend a second of that 2.5 hours thinking about lasers in my eyes.
The other benefit of doing my long run before LASIK is that I was pretty worn out (more on that in a minute) and being tired made less stressed. The good news is that my tired state coupled with the valium they gave me right before surgery made me totally relaxed during the procedure. It has only been 36 hours since surgery, but so far so good!
The not great news is that my 16 mile run was exactly half the distance I will running in less than 2 months and I was totally spent after 16 miles. This is when I have to remember that I have not tapered, I am still fighting cough / cold / congestion crap and that I didn't follow my race day nutrition. I am looking forward to my 18 mile run next week to see how I feel and hopefully I will finally be rid of this cough!
Good luck to all those racing long tomorrow ... yes, I am a wee bit jealous.
I couldn't end this post without mentioning 9/11. Ten years later ... may we never forget.
2 comments:
First of all, great work on the runs. Secondly, why have I not started listening to books while I run? I'm an idiot, and I'll have to remedy that very soon. I listened to Tina Fey's Bossypants this year, and it was hilarious!
I love the audiobook idea!!!!
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