{"id":44316,"date":"2026-05-12T18:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T22:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=44316"},"modified":"2026-05-12T18:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T22:19:09","slug":"counting-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=44316","title":{"rendered":"Counting Down."},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;re in the final countdown of a return to marathons. <br \/><br \/>This has been a rough patch to be sure. Recovery was always going to be hard but this has been a grueling few months, a slow build of distance and endurance via a meticulous training regimen.<br \/><br \/>But truth be told&#8230; I don&#8217;t think it worked.<br \/><br \/>I&#8217;m exhausted and unable to maintain any kind of pace or running tempo. I walk a lot of the distances&#8230; and that&#8217;s even at the shorter distance runs during the week. The long runs? The 18s or 20s I did in preparation for the 26 miles coming up on Sunday? Too many miles done with too many walking segments.<br \/><br \/>I honestly think I&#8217;ll do worse than the full blown stress fracture event way back in January. <br \/><br \/>And it&#8217;s breaking my heart, body, and soul.<br \/><br \/>Of late&#8230; or maybe it&#8217;s always been the case&#8230; I&#8217;m feeling like Eeyore is my spirit animal, the depressed donkey who cannot find joy even in the rambling 100 Acres Wood. I&#8217;m not sure how to break free of this. Running and its endorphins used to provide at least a moment&#8217;s respite. But those days seem as remote as childhood memories.<br \/><br \/>It&#8217;s only been six months or so of the egregious stress fracture pain and plan of action for getting back into shape. But it doesn&#8217;t seem to be getting any better&#8230; if anything it seems to be getting worse by the day. Less capable, less endurance, less mileage.<br \/><br \/>If I had a second sight, a gift, a shining, I&#8217;d say the omens are not good and point to an outlook a magic eight ball might warn me against. That&#8217;s hardly where I need or want to be five days from having to run 26.2 miles.<br \/><br \/>If you google &#8220;Eeyore catchphrases&#8221;&#8230; and I know this plummets us into the depths of middle-school speech writing citing Webster dictionary definitions&#8230; but if you google that, you come up with sadly all too fitting viewpoints for my mood of late. \u00a0But let&#8217;s end with the least bad one, shall we?\u00a0<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>&#8220;Could be worse. Not sure how, but it could be.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re in the final countdown of a return to marathons. This has been a rough patch to be sure. Recovery was always going to be hard but this has been a grueling few months, a slow build of distance and endurance via a meticulous training regimen. But truth be told&#8230; I don&#8217;t think it worked. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44319,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44316\/revisions\/44319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}