I’ve been running mile after mile after mile, but it doesn’t
seem like I get any faster. It’s what
makes running—actually, any athletic endeavor—a challenge: your mind.
Mine is more that my brain moves at the speed of light, but my feet
struggle to do a mile under 10 minutes.
Long runs are both a constant stream of conscious and a constant feed of
“I’m bored. I’m so flipping bored. How much longer do I have to be bored?”
Of late, I’m disappointed with my slow, slugglish pace when
I upload my run. It’s very discouraging
when I’ve done so much speed work and run my recovery miles, yet rather than
improve, I am still at 12+ min pace, rather than the 10:30 pace I’m trying to
reach. I don’t have a choice here; to
qualify for Boston I have to be able to run a marathon near 9 min pace, and
even if I’m wearing a charity bib, almost all the runners finish before five
hours.
It’s always been a struggle to get motivated to do the
longer runs of marathon training because they take hours, and then I’m spent
all day. Add in winter where I’m not
running as much during the week, and I feel even slower. I had started dreading the long run, the
time, the boredom….and I wanted a distraction.
Of course, I’m the type of runner who when distracted, slows down even
more. Not helpful. Also not helpful…not
having a big race on the horizon because there’s no PR for me to chase. I needed a reboot, a way to push myself
through, to maximize my limited time with mileage.
About a month ago, I started out on my Sunday recovery run,
feeling sluggish and slow, tired and battling a headache. While it was a recovery run, I did have a
deadline: the sunset. My route would take me on trails that closed
at sunset, 7:05 pm, so that was the cutoff.
After about a mile and a half, I hit a stoplight and checked
my watch: 6:34 pm. I thought about the route and guesstimated
that I would really have to push myself to finish the trails in a half hour.
The trail coursed through the local high school’s athletic
fields and then followed some power lines.
It seemed like I could not get out of the high school area, but as I
turned onto the trail at the power lines, I could see the trail all the way to
the golf course. “Oh, that’s not so
far,” I thought. “Maybe I can do this.” I coursed down the hill, and as I crested the
hill by the golf course, I checked my watch again. 6:47 pm.
18 minutes is totally doable.
I ended up leaving the park at 6:58 pm, about seven minutes
ahead of schedule. My next deadline was
to finish in under an hour, or 7:15 pm.
It was about two miles, so well under my usual pace. I pushed onwards and hoped for the best.
As I made the last turn towards home, I was surprised
again. 7:08 pm. I had reached two goals I didn’t think
possible on a day like today. It’s
amazing what happens when you make up your mind to do something…..
(to be continued)
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