I woke up this morning, and there was beautiful, glorious weather. The humidity was low, the breeze was cool. It was magnificent. I downed a glass of water, put on some shorts (that I hate, by the way. I think they are designed in such a way to make me look like an old woman. Must get better shorts.) and a tank top, and went out.
On Wednesday, after my horrible run, I began to rethink this October Marathon thing. I have such a hard time running in the heat. How am I supposed to run 16 and 20 milers in this horrible heat? I was thinking that perhaps the best thing would be to do a marathon in the spring, where I could do long runs in February and March instead of July and August. I could always fall back to the half marathon in October. No shame in that. Well, maybe a little. I decided to wait until August to make the decision.
Determined to do a 10k today, I told myself if I can do this, there's hope for marathon training. I would not allow myself to take a walk break until I had run 5k. Then, I could take a 2 minute break.
At about 1.2k, I got tired and thought it would be great to walk. Then I asked myself the question my friend shared with me last year: Do you NEED to walk, or do you WANT to walk? I merely wanted to walk. So I kept running. I got to run through a couple of sprinklers. That was refreshing! The 5k mark came and I kept running. I figured, I'll run until 7k if I can, and then take a walk break. That's when I got into my groove. Without the scorching heat to destroy me, I felt like myself again. The run was fantastic. I ran the whole way.
I did stop for about 3 seconds to wait for a sprinkler to point in my direction, but I'm not counting that.
Distance: 6.22 miles
Time: 1:06:31
Pace: 10:41
YAY for an awesome run!! I must still get a tank top. I wouldn't count the three second stop for the sprinkler either. :)
ReplyDeleteYay! I'm needing new shorts, too. The ones I'm wearing have a contrasting band on the bottom, and it rubs a bit when I'm hot and sweaty. Being the end of June now, it will be a few months before I get to run and not be hot and sweaty.
ReplyDeleteI only had one short run this weekend. I did a little under 2 miles because I didn't get up early enough to go farther. But I had some great cross training since I went roller skating with the jr high youth group :)