I Probably Should Make My Blog Public again

Well I feel good about the length of this run, but not about the speed.

I wish I had worn my watch because mapmyrun.com says my course was 5.05 mi.  I did it 3X with water/gatorade breaks in between.  The second water break might have been 3 minutes because I had to talk to Chuck about possibly picking me up (it had started to thunder and I didn't want to get caught in a storm), but the other was about 1 min.  Still my run took 20 minutes more than it should have.  I guess either I was going 11 min pace, although I didn't feel like I was, OR I started a little later than I thought I did.

Whatever.  Next week I'll wear my watch.

I did 3 tempo miles (maybe a little bit faster) and 2 marathon pace miles.  I'm counting the marathon pace as fast.  I couldn't find my watch so I had to calculate my pace by how many songs had played.  The only mile I figured was the last, which was roughly 8:50.  The 4th mile was about the same pace and the first 3 were a lot faster.

I think I've hit a wall with my training, mentally.  I feel like I don't have any motivation to do any faster-paced runs.  I haven't felt as good about my running since before vacation, probably because my training wasn't that intense during that week and I haven't gotten back on track.  I think my run on Sunday also has made me feel a little down about my running.  I'm just afraid that I've put all this time and I'm not going to perform as well as I'd like.

Hopefully today helped my mood.  I felt good for the first 2 miles, stuck with the fast pace for one more mile, then slowed to a comfortable, but not slow, pace.  I just need a couple more good runs this week.  Then maybe I'll be back on track.

Ran at Parkland--down to Kaufman, over to Duncan and through the little perimeter.

I enjoy running with Jason Gumbel.  He and I are pretty much the same speed and we chat about school while running.  He gives a pretty honest view of student life at STM.

All through this run I was trying to talk myself into just going 4 miles.  I'm glad I didn't listen to my negative side. 

I'm still going through a bump in my training.

I hate this slow mile/fast mile thing.  I can't remember how to change my setup and I'm too lazy to sit and figure it out. 

I needed a run like today.  I don't know my exact pace, but it took me around 57 minutes to do my 6.4 miles (about 8:45 pace).  What motivated me today was that I saw Tiffany running when I first started out, and I decided that I wanted to run faster.  I passed her and thought about slowing down once I figured she wasn't running the same route, but decided that I could run faster for my whole run.  I wasn't huffing and puffing, but it was challenging.  Luckily the weather was perfect for a run--it's going to rain soon!  Another midwest storm!

I think taking another day off was helpful also.  I didn't feel so beat down today.