I feel as though I have been missing in action this week. It has been a very busy week. I celebrated my 9 year anniversary Wednesday and cooked at church that day. I did find time to run. I ran Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. I have noticed that when I run every other day, I don't have as many problems with my plantar fasciitis. On Tuesday and Thursday, I ran a 5k distance but I am most pleased with my run on Thursday. Let me explain why.
On Thursday, I normally take a class called Butts and Guts at my local rec center. Once I stepped out the door to take my son to school, there was no way that I could skip running. I have been quite skeptical about running by myself because there has been a few incidents of people being followed by car that were on bikes or runners almost getting hit by a car because the driver is too busy messing with a cell phone, radio or something else. With the weather being so nice, I just couldn't resist so I skipped my class and decided to go for it. That is definitely a runner e-card that you see floating around on Facebook. You know you are runner when you skip your favorite exercise class to go for a run because the weather is too perfect not to.
I changed into my running shoes and headed out the door. It had been a while since I had run in 62 degree weather but I definitely welcomed the change in temperature. It has either been high temps and high humidity or low temps and still high humidity. So in other words, the weather definitely was not cooperating.
What started out as a leisurely run, quickly turned into a 5k worth of speed work. Not intentional at all. I don't know if you remember me talking about why I was so disappointed in my pace. When the weather was cooler in the spring, I was able to run 4.2 miles with an average pace of 9:09 a mile. So when the weather warmed up, my pace went down due to the heat and humidity. Since I was use to running anywhere between 10:25 to 10:40 a mile, running a 9 minute mile was definitely speed work.
I kept thinking to myself that I needed to slow down and as crazy as this sounds, I couldn't force myself to slow down. I was loving being able to run in the cooler weather and feeling the burn in my lungs because my breathing was definitely not where it should be since I haven't run that fast in a while. It felt absolutely AMAZING!!!
After probably about a mile or a little over, I had to stop to catch my breath and then I was off again. There was this hill that I just looked at and normally would opt out of running up since I was by myself. I was like you know what, I can do that and stayed at the current pace that I was at. Maybe a tad bit slower. You know what? I did too. I normally slow down big time going up hills but not this time. I was on a roll. Then I got to this stop sign and had to stop once again. Not because I was unable to breathe but seriously thought that I was going to throw up. I was really working hard on my run. Funny thing is that because I had all these issues while running, I actually felt like I accomplished something.
I worked myself to the point that I thought I was going to throw up. I probably have never pushed myself like that ever. I was so proud that I did something that I really thought I had lost. I am hoping that maybe on race day the weather will be like it was on Thursday and maybe just maybe I will be able to finish within my goal or under. I have just a little over a month before my first one and then once that one is complete I have 2 weeks before my next week. I am just ready for race day!!!
I will be running 9 miles tomorrow morning and that means that is the true test on whether I can maintain that pace for a long distance run or if it was just a short distance run. I am going to start out slow and slowly work myself up to going faster and faster. Maybe doing this unexpected speed work will pay off. So until next time.
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