Sometimes Bad is Bad

You know those running days, the ones where it's a chore to even put on your running shoes, let alone actually do the run itself? But then you get out there, and you have the run of your lifetime, you have the wind beneath your feet and could fly forever.

Know what I'm talking about?

Yeah.

That's was just about the opposite of yesterdays run. We got home a bit early and did a weather check and noticed roughly the same temperatures as the day/night continued and that there was always a chance of thunderstorms. As there was no rain at the moment we decided to go earlier rather than later since there was going to be no break in the temperature. We had 8 miles with 8x100m on the schedule. Our plan was to run about 6.5 miles, ending at a school in our neighborhood. We can do the strides on the sidewalk in front of the school since it's a long block and roughly 100m long. Then we would only have about 0.5 miles left after the strides, putting us just about at our apartment.

We had problems starting the run too fast and then getting stuck in that rut where you speed up slow down, speed up slow down to try and get to your target pace and instead just jump all over the place. The first 6 miles had these paces :

1. 8:46
2. 8:23
3. 8:54
4. 8:39
5. 8:50
6. 8:47
   

We ended up doing ok, but that 8:23 thrown in there wasn't a great idea..especially since it was so early in the run. I just felt....I don't know...heavy I guess. Just plodding along and even though the paces were ok the effort to get them done was relatively high. We ended at the school just as planned at about 6.4 miles and started our strides. These ended up taking a lot out of me. To the point where I was dizzy and having a very hard time catching my breath. We slowed down and extended our recovery time between the strides and in turn the strides also had to come down a notch. After the strides, we shuffled ever so slowly towards home and finished the run.

I'm so proud of us that we did this run, and didn't do bad pace wise on the first 6 miles, but I have been having so many problems falling asleep at night that I am not the least bit surprised that the last part of the run was so difficult. Sometimes when you feel like complete ass...that's how the run ends up feeling. All you can do is lace up your running shoes the next day and try it again. That's what makes you a good runner. Looking at those bad runs and saying...yeah...I know it didn't go well..but it's only one day and I get to (get to being key) to do this again tomorrow. I have to remind myself of that all the time.

That of course is easy to do here because tonight is a simple 5 mile recovery run.

Happy Wednesday!