Yesterday I was pretty much miserable all day. I was cold and went and tired and I didn't want to go running. At. All.
On the walk home from the train it wasn't raining though and we had dried out by then. I knew we were going to do the miles anyways and if we didn't do it then we would have 4 days straight of running which could have put a damper on our long run. So we got home and begrudgingly put on our running clothes. I grabbed the Garmin and pouted outside while it got the signal.
And then the most extraordinary thing happened.
The run was fantastic! The first mile clicked by in 8:30, the next on in 8:30, the next one in 7:59 (what the hell was that), then 8:30, then 8:05, and ending with 8:50 only because we got stuck at a long light and I chose to wait it out instead of zigzagging because I was all wet and didn't want to have to walk extra home. We averaged 8:24 min/mile for the run which is fantastic for a midweek run.
As we did our 2 block cool down I told Jason that we could have chosen not to go and we would have been upset because we didn't get the run in. We could have gone and had a really shitty run like we thought we were going to have. Or, as what did happen, we could have gone and had a great, beyond our expectations run. I have found frequently when I'm feeling crappy I have the best runs. If you choose to not go, it's always worse than getting out there AND if you get out there you have the possibility of surprising yourself. There that's my motivational snippet for the day.
8 years ago
7 comments:
Leah-
Nice run. Sometimes I think that your brain doesn't want to run but your body really does. Apparently you had one of those days. I guess you get the reverse days too. Your brain wants to run but the body says....I don't think so!
DAd
Good job turning nothing into something.
> ending with 8:50 only because
> we got stuck at a long light
Don't you use your Garmin's "auto pause" feature to stop the clock when you are at a stop light?
Hi Joe-
I don't use the auto pause feature on the watch. I have thought about it, but in general I can dodge lights without a problem. Maybe I should turn on that autopause feature though....I tend to not like to do it for long runs because I'll stop to get water and I like to know what the total time for the run was including water stops since I cannot drink and run during a race and so I tend to slow a bit for the miles that include water stops. Then I can be ready to be ok with water stop miles being slower....don't know if that makes any sense.
> I like to know what the total
> time for the run was including
> water stops
The Garmin keeps track of that too! I can't remember the name of the field but look it up in the manual. You can either add the field to one of the three real-time summary pages on the watch or wait until you upload the data to your computer.
The guilt. I've slacked off these last two days using the weather as an excuse (as opposed to the four hours of sleep or whatever I subject myself to). That, and I'm tapering (yeah, that's it) for the Lakefront 10.
Thanks for the motivation, actually. Really. I'll run tomorrow at my usual evil early hour. See, I've had the same experience of an unexpected awesome run when my head was totally not into it. Thanks, really!
Terry, in Chicago.
ps - check out "sporttracks" for really good Garmin software/interfacing.
Awesome pace, you two.
It's stories like this that keep me running.
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