Started at ~58F, rising to mid 60s, mostly sunny. A bit too warm in the sun, but a nice breeze near home for the last few miles. Objective: endurance + club run + Spirit Crusher Hill + strong finish. I would love to say it was a "fast finish," but by that point the effort-to-results ratio was all messed up. Fabulous run. Fun, friends, great beauty, and lots of sweat. I left the house about 5:45AM and just had a leisurely warm up around the neighborhood before heading down the hill to meet with the club. If I haven't mentioned it before, I live in some hills above a fairly flat valley. The "old Snoqualmie" is down in the valley and that is where the club meets and runs. The road down into town is a 2 mile long hill, the steepest part of which occurs near the top, the "Spirit Crusher." That part of the hill is .8 mile of crazy-steep asphalt. As I headed down the hill, there were a few wispy high clouds, but then I saw what looked like fog in the valley below! Oh joy --but alas, it was not fog. In fact, it turned out to be a bit of low cloud that soon dissipated. After descending into town, I met up with the club and ran about 6 miles with a new person who said she wanted to run a pace in the 9:00's but then changed her mind to run with me in the 10:00's. She is healing from an injury and thought maybe a slower pace would be good. I enjoyed chatting with her very much, but I did have to remind her to slow down many times, because I was not interested in running at MP today! "Are you SURE you want to run with me?" Oh yes, she was sure... But it turned out to be a win-win situation because she hasn't been running that far lately and me holding her back became a real blessing as she got very tired in the last mile or two. And I got to spend time with a very nice person. I am starting to think that one of the best things about being in a running club is just having more people in your life who will not roll their eyes or yawn when you go on and on about running. And then they go on and on, and you can compare notes, and it's all quite satisfying.
I decided to come back up the hill immediately after the club run, before it got too hot, and finish my miles on my usual turf. That was a good decision I think. The Spirit Crusher was brutal, as always. I will stop calling it that when it stops being scary-hard. But other than a pit stop at the Fischer Park bathroom, I ran the whole hill! After that, my legs were quite weak and I dropped into the 11:00s for pace.
After doing some loops through the business park, the pea patch (wow it looked good!), and some other neighborhoods, I decided to try and push myself a little the last 1.5 miles. I increased my cadence and tried to turn up the power, but I only managed to come back to about a 10:00 pace. I guess it's good practice though, and I tried to imagine the last part of a marathon and finishing strong. Observations on what makes long runs more successful:
1) 8+ hours of sleep
2) sticking to a plan
3) noticing how beautiful the world is
4) not having somewhere you have to be afterwards, feeling rushed
5) controlling your thoughts and thinking positively, ie "this is not hard / lots of people run much farther, much faster/ this is actually quite easy." Keep saying it, even when you don't believe it! Why? Because it will keep out the opposite thinking, which may be equally untrue! I.e. "I can't do it/ I'll never make it."
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