There are good runs and bad runs

Aside from weigh in posts, I've been pretty absent from blogging lately. It's not that I don't have anything to say, it's just after 8-10 hours a day in a stressful work environment, starring at a computer screen I don't really feel like blogging much in the evenings. After work I'm usually good to barely get my workout in and get a healthy dinner eaten before zoning out in front of the time waster aka the TV. I know I should watch less TV, but most days I don't feel like it.

Let's pick our battles here, and I'd rather battle my impressive sweets addiction I've let back into my life.

As I mentioned in my weigh in post earlier, I did get all 3 of my training runs in last week. Oh yeah. If you haven't followed amongst the long gap of updates, training has officially started for the Disney World Half Marathon I am doing in January.

After 2 weeks of skipping workouts, I finally completed a full schedule last week. And I realized you truly have good runs and bad runs. Thursday was a bad run. I just felt really off. I was at the gym on the treadmill. I felt overheated and I finally gave up around mile 2.5. I was so focused on my pace and how it wasn't good enough (15 min miles), I frustrated myself and talked myself into quitting.

I decided late Friday not to do the Germantown Bier Fest 5K as planned. I love this event so it was a hard decision to make, but doing 3.1 miles when I needed to be doing 5.5 as I outlined on my training schedule wasn't going to cut it. And I'm still not sure about running two days in a row. Plus, I needed to save the $35 I would of had to pay day of the race since I have a lot of travel coming up (Atlanta, holidays, Orlando)

I was so glad I decided to focus on my long run instead.

I woke up at 4:30 AM on Saturday morning (not on purpose) and laid in bed until my alarm went off at 6:15. Surprisingly, the too early wake up call didn't phase me and I was at the greenway by 6:40. It was a beautiful morning and I ran by 2 deer (twice) literally inches from the trail.

I decided to do something different and leave the phone (stopwatch and music) in the car. All I carried with me was my car key and water (I forgot the Shot Bloks at home, but I ended up not needing them) and off I went. When I was warming up I thought, "Crap, how am I going to do my intervals without a stopwatch." Silly me quickly realized the trail is pretty much marked every quarter mile, so I decided to take it easy and run a quarter mile, walk a quarter mile; out and back.

It worked like a charm.

I had been doing 5 minutes running and 1 or 2 minutes walking, but I was finding myself nosediving halfway through my runs. True, a quarter mile recovery walk is probably a bit too much recovery time, but it was easy for me to keep track of with no watch.

I finished 5.8 miles in my fastest time.

5.8 miles in 84 minutes. Of course that time is approximate since that includes walking to/from the car to look at the time. But by all conservative estimates, that is a 14:29 minute mile!

Timing my intervals by distance and allowing myself more "recovery time" WORKED!

Also, I got my head out of the clouds from Thursday's run and realized my pace is JUST FINE where it is for right now. I don't HAVE to be any faster for the race in January. I ONLY have to be able to do 13.1 miles in 3 hours and 30 minutes. And even if I take every last second of 3 hours and 30 minutes to finish, that will still be my fastest Half Marathon time, and an accomplishment.

So no more worrying about "going faster." My natural running pace right now is 15 minute miles and I am finally OK with that.