dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

I got to sleep way to late last night (3am) so that kind of killed my day and I didn't run in the morning, but I got out later on and I had a good run.  My hips felt better today than they have in a while.  They felt great through 7.5 and then tightened up a bit the last 1.5 miles.  So I was happy about that even though they tightened up the last little bit.

It is hard to truly classify this run as easy, but that is closer than any of the other classifications.  I ran indoors because I was sick of always bundling up every time I wanted to run.  I really tried to keep the pace slower, however through 4 miles I was at 26:58 because I get excited every time I step onto a track and I can't help myself.  I kept the last mile slow for the first three laps, but then I finally decided that I didn't care and that I wanted to run fast instead of trying to slow down the entire time, so I picked up the pace and ran somewhere in the range of a 70 second 4th lap and finally a 57 second final lap.  So, I finished in 33:12, which is just a shade under 6:40 pace.

I have to say that this was probably the slowest run I have gone on in my entire life.  I ran with Sasha at 5am and due to the time, and the fact that there was snow all over the ground, and because we were chatting a fair amount, it was slow.  We finished the 10.1 miles in 1:26:41 (I could be wrong about the exact time, but close enough) which puts us on the wrong side of 8:30 per mile.  I honestly think that when I went on the occasional run with my dad around the age of 10 that we probably went faster than that.  So it was very slow, but I guess I can't say it was a bad thing.  Maybe I wont get hurt this time around because I haven't run more than .4 miles at faster than 6 minute pace since I started running again.

So, I accidentally overslept this morning and I missed my morning class.  I guess that it helps in a sense because it helps me catch up on my sleep which I don't get enough of although my grades will probably suffer.  I ran in the evening after work and I kept the mileage low.  Nothing special to report except that my hips are slowly feeling better.  Each week they seem to feel a little better as I adjust to running again and I increase the mileage.

I ran with Sasha this morning and I felt pretty good.  I only got 7 hours of sleep, but that is the most sleep I have gotten on a morning that I get up to run with Sasha in a while.  At least I felt more awake than I normally do which was good.  We kept the pace really slow at the beginning because we were slipping a lot on the fresh snow that came down right before we left to run.  We made it through 2 miles in just under 18 minutes and it looked like we were going to repeat our run from Wednesday.  However, after that we started to settle into the run a little better and I think that the snow started to settle a bit, which helped our traction on the ground so we were not slipping so much.  We had made up enough time to catch up to an 8:30 average by the 10k mark, and shortly thereafter we settled into a pace in the mid 7 minute range.  We finished around 1:23:00 which is still pretty slow, but considering the conditions not so bad, and certainly better than on Wednesday.

Todays run was good.  I felt relaxed and I didn't feel stiff or sore at all.  about 7 miles into the run, I put in 1.05 miles at 5:50 which felt good.  I was supposed to be going marathon race pace, but considering my level of fitness right now it felt more like 1/2 marathon race pace.  Even still, I was not pushing it too hard and I felt good, so I felt happy knowing that I still have the ability to pick it up every once in a while