Well, El Scorcho seriously messed with my mind and was kind of cruel to some of my body parts! The race is awesome, but it is an adventure race. Considering all the training I'm doing, with one big goal in mind, I shouldn't have signed up for this one! My feet and thighs hurt! I guess running on dirt trails, instead of the hard streets, that I'm used to, really caused my feet some pain. I will be fine and will not back off my training. But it did leave me with an unexpected mental burn out. The first thought that crossed my mind, after finishing old El Scorcho, was "Man, I don't want to run for 2 or 3 weeks". I haven't experienced that feeling in a long time. Right when I'm starting to feel good about truly following my training schedule (still minus the bike rides), I go and think it's a good idea to run some crazy race at midnight ! The good news, if you want to call it that, is being burned out is part of training and part of being a runner. My solution, as always, has been to show up for my training runs, no matter what and run (unless I'm seriously injured). My next step was to Google "mental burn out for runners". I found a few good links - see below. Also this reminded me, when I'm training for one big goal, I need to be careful to pick races that are in-line with my ultimate goal. I can assure you, an adventure race like El Scorcho was not in my training schedule to become Boston Qualified. Take a few minutes to look at some of the links I have posted. There is some good information, regarding "Mental Burn-out or Mental Blocks" for runners.
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