***** I am moving my blog here (runisthenewwalk.blogspot.com) from (thenextinstallment.wordpress.com) because wordpress is now blocked at my place of employment, yet blogger is not. Grr. For archive blog posts, please visit http://thenextinstallment.wordpress.com.
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Last Friday I decided run (humiliate myself) with the middle school cross country team.
Many of them are in my band, so they were SO excited that I was there. I was definitely right when I told them that I wouldn't be running WITH them so much as BEHIND them. Ha.
My legs felt like lead and the whole run (only 1.5 miles) felt like work. I had trouble breathing, and never really felt a groove. When I got back to my desk I looked up the weather and saw that it was 95% humidity! Holy crap!
It had been a while since I had really felt strong, and hadn't been able to break past the 1.5 or 2 mile mark on my runs, and I was seriously starting to wonder if I was going to be ready for my next 5K on October 2nd. Thankfully, friends reminded me about the evil nature of humidity and the mind/body games that it delights in! So when Saturday dawned cool, and beautiful (once the rain stopped), and 49% humidity, the runner in me was dying to see if it could be done. I mapped out a new 3 mile course, and took off, promising my husband that if it felt off at all that I would walk and come home. You see, this was my first time running two days in a row.
Run results: 3.19 miles WITHOUT stopping! Oh my word... it felt amazing. AND my pace is improving. It was sub 15 min/mile! (When I started, I was at 16:30 ish a mile) I was so happy. Ecstatic. I would fill THIS WHOLE PAGE with exclamation points to try to get the DEPTH of my excitement across, but I think that it would just hurt your eyes.
Sunday: Recovery Day. Didn't really hurt much, but knew I needed to rest.
Monday: 3.11 miles WITHOUT STOPPING AGAIN!!! So-- IT WASN'T A FLUKE!!!!
(Here we go, again with the exclamation points... ay yi yi)
And my pace was still fast (for me), and I felt at the end that I could have kept going, but I was SO ready to be with my family again, so I stopped.
I have turned a major mental corner -- physical, too, but mostly mental. I feel like I could take on a Hal Higdon training program now, or a Coach Jay plan from Nike+. I feel like I could DO that now.
Wow. :)
