Follow junior distance runner Nora Hubbell of Mt Desert Island as she blogs about her indoor season. Hubbell fInished 6th in the Class B 3200m race last spring. She'll run the 800m, Mile & 2 Mile this winter.
Hello again!
So, after touching on my cross country season in my last post, I suppose I should talk about indoor a bit, as that’s the intention of this blog.
I love indoor from different reasons than cross country. Cross country is great because we run outside, and we get to be more active in our runs, since we run more on trails than a track and you have to be on your toes--both literally and figuratively--to avoid difficult terrain. For MDI in particular, cross country has a huge focus on our team.
Indoor is very different. The team is much smaller: our girls distance team comprises of myself and Caroline Driscoll, and there are probably closer to twenty people on the team as opposed to thirty or more for cross country. We go up to UMaine Orono once a week to run there and do more of our day to day workouts on the track. One of the biggest differences is the concentration of effort. Indoor gets a much greater focus on individual performances, even compared to outdoor. Normally after cross country it’s nice to get a chance to run as more of an individual, but this year I’m really enjoying being around a team again.
This year, my indoor season is a little different. I’m much busier, as I mentioned in my last post,and because of this I end up running without the team once or twice a week. This can sometimes be nice, since I only ever miss the long runs with the team, and long runs give me time to think and unwind, which I don’t always get enough time to do.
Running by myself has been interesting, since it tends to happen at six or seven o’clock at night, on the trails behind my house with a headlamp. Especially at that time, it’s even harder to make sure that I get out and run for multiple reasons. For one, at that point I’m exhausted, since I’ve worked on my internship proposal for so long that my brain can’t think reasonably about anything, I’ve had a two hour gymnastics practice, and I know I have several hours of homework to do whenever I get done with the run. On top of this, it gets pretty scary when I see a pair of glowing eyes in the middle of the woods. So far, I’ve only run into deer, but it’s still absolutely terrifying when they jump out in front of me without warning.
I do think that I’m getting better at pushing through when I don’t want to do something or when I’m having a tough time. I realized this on Monday. Our distance team was doing a pyramid workout, and it was just getting dark enough that it was more difficult to see the track. We had just started the first interval when I tripped on something. It might have been someone’s shoe, it might have been the track or the skim of water covering it. Either way, I wiped out completely. I fell flat on my face, hit my head, and saw stars for a moment. I laid there for a second then slowly picked myself up. I talked to my coach, and decided to go inside to get an icepack.
This time last year, I would have completely given up. I would have thought I couldn’t do the workout. I probably would have felt bad for myself and annoyed at everything, and it would have ruined my day. By the time I got off the track, I realized I really didn’t want to go inside. I took a couple deep breaths, tried to wash off my forehead a little, and went back and finished the workout. I felt good about what I did. I know I gave one hundred percent of what I could give, and that’s something to be proud of. Realizing that I would have been miserable if I’d gone inside was important. Even though I’ve been limping around for the past two days, surviving on a combination of arnica and ibuprofen, I’ve learned something. Working hard and pushing through pain feels better than giving up, and I’m proud that I’m stronger than I was last year. I can push through things that would have made me give up.
At the end of the day, aren’t we all trying to push through difficult times? It doesn’t matter if it’s a hard workout, homework, or just going for a run again. We’re all trying to be better, and we should all be proud of making that effort.
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