Still learning 3 years later

Although I feel I've come a long way in the three years since I started running, I realize more and more that I still have a long way to go before I really know what I'm capable of. To me, running is more about learning about my mind and how it works than simply how to put one foot in front of the other. To me, that's the easy part. The hard part is dealing with my mind and how it works during my running. There are times when it tells me to stop and I have to fight it and other times when my running seems effortless and I could run forever.

Finding out what I'm truly capable of means that I need to train with people who can push me harder and harder. I'm lucky that I have plenty of people to lean on for this type of training. When I go trail running on Tuesdays, Ken sets a pretty good pace. I'm nowhere near where his is speed wise but my main goal is to make sure that he doesn't get so far ahead of me that I can't see him. If I run with slower runners then it's easy to fall back to their pace. Running slowly has it's advantages, especially for long distances but it's also nice to push it every now and then.

I noticed that ever since I did that mini-tempo run last Tuesday, my speed has increased slightly. My 10 mile run this morning was one of the fastest I've done in months. I seem to walk a fine line between wanting to run a fast race and wanting to continue running long distance races. Some of the really good runners are able to do both but I'm not there........yet!