running: the dawn

After Sunday’s tortured run on the dreadmill, I feel like I had a fairly strong week of running.  Hit my goals pretty much right on target and with the addition of the pull up bar I got in some decent cross training.

This week’s miles:

Sunday-13; first long run that also included my “marathon pace” and although it was on a treadmill, I survived.
Monday-5; recovery run.
Tuesday-nothing; well, I mean no miles.  I did go to Jazzercise afterall…
Wednesday-11; mid-week mid-distance that stole all my energy reserves from me.
Thursday-zero; the beginning of my quest for a pull-up begins.
Friday-8; with 4 at my 15k pace.  I ended up doing them at an 8:15 pace, rather than the prescribed 8:30!  Yay!

Total miles: 37

I was tempted to do a short run on Thursday to get my miles at 40, but I am trying to get my knee back at 100%, so I’ll save the junk miles and rest up instead.

My run today was so challenging.  Not in the actual running of it, but the getting me out the door.  I got home a little later than usual and so I decided that I needed to do some things around the house including getting supper ready before heading out.  Somehow that turned into me finding one excuse after another and had to wrestle the self doubt to the ground.

I started with a three mile warm up at an easy pace.  I decided to include a recalibration of the dear nike+ system because I was worried that it would be lying to me about my pace, and since this was meant to be a lactate threshold workout I didn’t want to cheat myself out of anything.  After my two laps around the track I set off.  Once the warm up was complete I was off on the open road with my “running fast” playlist blaring and my feet cruising along.

I knew there were going to be two pretty major hills during my speedy miles, so I didn’t worry too much when I checked my pace and it was under 8 miles.  I knew I wouldn’t be holding that pace during the hilly section.  The weirdest part?  My slowest section was the mega-hill I call Big Bertha, as I was running down. Not up.  Down.  Strange.  I mean, I guess most of my focus was on making sure that I didn’t fall on my face and that could have contributed to the sluggish pace.

Half way up the second hill I had to resort to my motivational grunts.  I don’t know what it is about putting voice to the pain that makes it seem more bearable.  It simultaneously makes me feel hard core and extremely silly.  Like I want to laugh at myself and/or punch something.  A very strange dichotomy.