Monday Morning

Monday mornings never seem to be all that good, but today's run wasn't too bad. Although I didn't get much sleep last night (I didn't even hear my wife's alarm go off... twice), I was still able to stagger out of bed at about 6:10 and out the door at 6:20.

I ran the 3.44 mile loop around my neighborhood, but I definitely started out too fast. I knew I was going too fast at the beginning of the run, but things were feeling so good, I just wanted to keep going and see what I could do. Turns out, I got the first mile done in just over 9:30... almost 5K pace! That's not what I was intending to do, so I tried to slow down a bit, and went to a 4 minute run/1 minute walk structure to try to keep me honest. And the outcome of this hard work? I did the second mile in 10:00. Honestly, I haven't run this course enough to know exactly where the three mile mark is, so I'm not sure what I got for my third split, but I finished the whole thing in 33:51... which seems to be awfully fast. According to Merv's Running Calculator, the pace was 9:50.4/mi. I should have been running about 1:30/mile slower than that.

I think one problem with running intentionally slower is that it just feels like I'm shuffling along, and not really running. I don't know if this is a mental block on my part, or if I need to work on my form when running slower, or what. I feel good that I was able to run so far and so fast, but I also know that I can't keep that up for six months. I hope I'll be able to work on it with my training group when I get back out there.