This morning I once again broke through that ten mile barrier.
Today, I knew I could get past it, but I still had the little doubts in my head. “Ten miles is a long way, you sure you want to?” Well, the 11.35 miles I did today, says “YES!” I still worry about running ten miles, just not as much any more. I ran it doing 5/1s, but does that mean I ran at leaset 10 miles today or did I walk some of it? Well, turns out, I actually ran 10.09 miles today. While the rest of it was walking.
The entire run took me 1:48:56, which happens to be 3 miles slower than I ran the 10.35 miles last week. Right off the bat, I not only ran further today, but ran quite a bit faster. Average pace overall was 9:36. My average pace during just my 5 minutes of runs, 9:03. There was one 5 minute interval where my pace was 11::34 but that was because I stopped off at my truck and swapped out water bottles. If I did not need to do that, then I would have had a sub 9 min average for the runs. It is all about fast transition times!
I did try to push myself a bit today, to see how it would work out. I wanted better time than I did last week, and I achieved that. Also, with this week, my legs didn’t start to feel much until mile 9.25. So that’s also a 1.5 mile improvement over last week. I would say that my training is going well for me. Just need to keep with it. Next week is 12 miles. I’m quite comfortable, sitting here with tired and achy legs, in saying that, 12 miles should not be an issue on Saturday at all. I probably could have pushed that out today if I really wanted to, but no need in going beyond what is prescribed and possibly doing some damage that could harm the goal.
My legs now know what 10 miles of actual running is again. They aren’t hating me. My head is in a good place right now. Over all, today was a good day for breaking mental barriers and pushing physical limits. Reminds me of a quote I came up with many years ago when I first started getting into shape…
“Limitations are a fabrication of the mind”
Yup. Title says it all. I went out and ran with a friend and we did an easy 6 mile run today. Not doing 5/1s or anything… A couple of breaks so we could water up. But nice and easy and completed it feeling great.
I remember towards the beginning of the year I was having problems running. I was able to do 3 miles for a while, and my goal was at least 3 miles 5 times a week. Yeah, that fell through, I’m still not running 5 times a week, that is way too agressive with all the other stuff I’m doing lately. But, it was so bad I just stopped running for several months and would go do it, and then flake, and run and flake. No real motivation to run since it was starting over, and that’s always hard.
Now I’m being consistant, getting out there 3-4 times a week following my plan to get my 25k done this year on Dec 31st. And I am now at a point where I can say I went out and ran an easy 6 miles and it is! It’s amazing to be able to say something like that after so many struggles through out the year that kept me out of it. But, I’m not going to let it get fully to my head. I know something can come along and derail my path here and I will have to start over, but knowing I can, and doing it so successfully now makes me think if I had to, I could.
And I’m still off the sugars since Oct 31st as well as caffeine, which was totally accidental. But, when I cut out the energy drinks, I just never replaced it with tea like I was planning on. I got too lazy to make a cup. Not sure why it was so easy this time around, no real withdrawal issues or anything, just cold turkey and it worked… So far…
Always a struggle and always staying vigilant!
I’m not a runner. I can apparently run, but I don’t think I have the mindset of a runner. Yet. I’ve been trying to be consistent on my running the past couple of months and with only a couple of minor set backs I’ve been able to maintain my consistency.
I believe that this is starting to show. Not only in my running times and distances, but in my mental game as well. 10 miles was always my “That is a long ass way to run” distance and as such, I always had a mental block there. This past Saturday, started off with a similar mental block. Especially since I didn’t make my 8 mile run the weekend before, nor did I actually run at all leading up to the ten miles. Just a super busy week of parties, get togethers and the like which caused me to miss out on my runs. So there it is, me thinking about all the missed runs leading up to 10 miles. My Wall. The point I struggle at. I’ve run past it before, but it’s been well over a year since the last time or two I’ve done it.
Because of those set backs last week, I went out with the goal of 10 miles. But with the option to cut it short if need be. I decided that the best way to accomplish this would be to head to Memorial Park and just run the loop there, so I could quit after 3 or 6 miles if need be and figured if I hit 9 miles, I will just walk if I have to, to get that 10 miles.
I set my Garmin up for my 5/1s and set off. And off I went! I had no problems at all until around 7.75 miles when my legs started to tighten a little bit. but I ran through it and finished my run with 10.35 miles in 1:43:01. Even with my 5/1 run/walk pacing I managed a 9:57 minute mile. Without the walks, my run average was 9:11. I was rather happy with that. Of course I didn’t recover properly afterwards since I went to the car show here and walked around for another 3 or so hours afterwards, but still. Things are looking good! And I’m kind of looking forward to the 11 mile run scheduled for this coming Saturday.
Also, last night I ran 4 miles, nice and easy and didn’t feel like I had too much residual issues from the run on Saturday. 4.13 miles in 35:56, means a 8:43 min/mile average 1) 8:52, 2) 8:35, 3) 9:01, 4) 8:21, 5) 8:53 (for the .13) So it was mostly negative splits except for mile 3, which I don’t know what happened there, but still not bad!
Let I said before, I’m mentally, not a runner… Yet. But that may change soon….
Yesterday, went to the Texas Renaissance Festival, which is always a lot of fun. Great shows, interesting people to watch and yummy yummy bad foods. This year, I was trying to be good and not eat too much crap food. And I was quite successful at it. I had one spiced almond (free sample), some fried alligator on a stick, a gyro, and a sausage on a stick. Based on years past, this is a VAST improvement on how I would normally gorge myself stupid there. For drinking, I had one beer and some mead, so again, not bad.
While that was not all that bad, that is ALL I had to eat and drink through out the day. Obviously, firstly, not enough hydration, since I didn’t have anything to drink aside the beer and mead. Definitely should have had some water throughout the day. And I knew I should have, but I didn’t. And I also didn’t really eat much more than that food either throughout the day. Definitely, not enough to fuel my body correctly.
This all showed up today during my run today. Went out to run 8 miles in the trails doing 5/1s. I got 2.5 miles in and my legs were feeling pretty dead already. Not looking good at all! It’s not from lack of rest, I slept almost 12 hours last night (was very tired and apparently needed that sleep!) I had a little bit to eat and drink before I went out for the run, but apparently my glycogen levels were very depleted. I managed to run 4.5 miles and then had to stop, legs were not able to give me any more, so I walked the last quarter mile back to the truck.
This definitely shows me how important nutrition really is. The run wasn’t horrible, wasn’t even bad. Just had legs that didn’t want to work because they were depleted. Will definitely have to keep this in mind when I’m out there doing fun things again. I know I can enjoy some of the bad foods out there, but also need to combine it with the good foods and be sure to drink plenty of hydrating liquids to make sure the body is fueled and ready to be used to it’s fullest capabilities at all time. This way I don’t have problems with having fun and then running the next day like this again.
This week will be a challenge with Thanksgiving on Thursday. Lots of yummy foods, both good and bad and so it will be a challenge to not gorge myself on either kinds and stay healthy and ready to run on Saturday!
What an interesting week this has been. Started off on Monday with my 5k TT so I could take a measure of where I am so I can see some progress.
I also had a one pound weight gain, and 3% body fat loss. Which for me meant I gained 7 pounds of muscle. That seemed odd to me, so I just stuck with what I was doing and waited for today to see what the scale would say. I’m taking these measurements on the same scale, and so it should be a bit more consistent.
- Tue 11/08 – 224.8 Pounds 23.4% Body Fat
- Fri 11/11 – 224.6 Pounds 23.8% Body Fat
- Mon 11/14 – 225.2 Pounds 20.9% Body Fat
- Fri 11/18 – 222.2 Pounds 23.1% Body Fat
As you can see, Monday was a strange day there.
My 5K TT was just as strange. I had an average pace of 8:18 min/mile. Which I was a little bit disappointed with as I was hoping for closer to 8:00-8:05 or something. But I did have some struggles with my stomach on it, as such, I took it in stride (pun intended!)
Last night, I went for a 3 mile run, which is only .1 mile shorter than 5k. I went out to do a nice easy run to loosen up a bit and see how things felt after the core workout in the morning, and the 4 mile run I did on Wednesday. I also went in yesterday morning to the Asthma and Allergy specialist and they poked me 64 times with various things to see if I have any allergies I should be made aware of and the only ones that came up were cat and dog (knew about the cat one, but not the dog one.) Anyways, I went out nice and easy, not breathing too hard or anything, and the first mile ticked off, I didn’t look at the watch as I didn’t really want to know, it was an easy run. I didn’t want to start getting competitive with myself.
I finished the run, and saw the time: 23:35.88
Wait. What?! How was that possible? It was an easy run, I wasn’t breathing hard at all! So I got home and dumped the data. Yeah. First two miles I averaged 7:55 minute miles. The third mile was 7:41 minute mile. So the average for the three miles was 7:51. My average pace over all was 25 seconds a mile FASTER on this easy run. My average heart rate was 173.
How can one go out, with the mind set to run as fast as they can, and be so much slower than going out for an easy run? This I don’t know.
But I do know, if this is the case, I am getting slower closer to my speeds I was at back in 2007/2008, and I like it.
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