Learning while I run

As I was sipping on my tea this morning and going over my training week I realized that this was a “down” week for training. It’s amazing how these down weeks come at just the right time for me. Down weeks don’t mean that I stop running it just means that my mileage is reduced slightly. This weekend I will be doing a 21+ mile trail run and then follow that up with a 10+ mile road run so it probably won’t feel much like a down week (LOL).

First up today was a 6+ mile run and the training plan said to do it at whatever pace I wanted. I decided that I was going to just run for “feel” today and decide as I went what pace I wanted to do.

After taking yesterday off, my legs felt strong and refreshed but the start of my run is an uphill climb so I didn’t want to push myself at the beginning. In fact, by the time my first mile was finished I had run a rather slow 8:42. Once I saw that, my competitive juices took over and I wanted to see if I could shave those 42 seconds off by the time I finished my run.

I kept doing mathematical equations in my head and soon realized that I had to run at least another 6 miles and that I would have to run an average of 7:52 just to shave those 43 seconds off from that slow first mile. That would put me at an 8 minute mile average or what I need for my race.

It was quite the game of cat and mouse as I tried shave off those precious seconds. I used plenty of mental imagery to get me through. I knew that after 7 miles I needed to be at 56 minutes.

Mile 2 I averaged only 8:09, then mile 3 was slightly better at 8:01. That put me at 24:51 but still 51 seconds left to try and shave with only 4 miles to do it. After mile 4 I was at 32:49 so 2 of those seconds were gone. After mile 5 my time was 40:44 and time was running out. It didn’t help that I still had a huge hill in front of me. I was only able to shave off 3 seconds from mile 5 to 6 and was 41 seconds away from what I needed with only 1 mile left. Mile 7 was my fastest mile (7:40) and my finishing time was 56:21 or 21 seconds off from what I needed if I was going to race.

My average pace was 8:03 so I was able to shave off most of that slow start and if I had gone longer I know I would have accomplished that. It was really interesting to see this game today and it taught me not to start out too slow but it also showed me that eventually I would have caught up to the pace that I needed. Today was an important day for me and I will bank this memory and use it to help me when it comes to my race.