Monday, April 7, 2014

You Get What You Need

I'm not entirely sure why but all of my workouts at the beginning of the week felt absolutely terrible. I felt like I had put in 15 hours of training when the previous week was closer to 5 hours. When I feel terrible in the pool that's when I know that something is off.

I ran on Monday and was just hot. It was a really hilly run so the slower pace didn't bother me but when I was struggling to run faster than 10 minute miles on Tuesday I got frustrated. I finally felt like my run was getting back to where it was before I got injured and then all of a sudden it was back to square one again.

I was planning on running on Wednesday and Thursday but got caught up in schoolwork and going out with friends (oops?) and it just didn't happen. Sometimes when my workouts aren't going well I like to skip one anyway because I hate having bad workouts. I train because I like it and I can deal with a few bad workouts here and there but when I feel worse after that's when I know something is wrong.

I spent all day Friday doing schoolwork and was going to run in the evening and then just as I was finishing up my schoolwork it started raining. I didn't want to take another day off from running but I didn't feel like I had the mental energy to deal with running in the rain. Excuses, excuses. I know.

But then it stopped raining. I went over to the local trail expecting to have a terrible run. And you know what? I didn't. I decided to do a progression run since I have been slacking on speed work lately and was pleasantly surprised not only with my pace but with how good I felt. I had just started doubting myself and telling myself that I would never run as fast as I did last year.

One of the nice things about being out of shape is not having any expectations. I ran the first mile easy before picking up the pace each subsequent mile. I did a similar progression run a few weeks ago and was hitting faster paces but I didn't really care. I was out there pushing myself and running hard. And it felt amazing.

I tried to drop my pace by 15 seconds each mile with the plan of really going for it the last mile. Since I haven't done much/any speed work I was afraid of going too fast early on and dying at the end. It's funny how things work out.

March 16- 4 miles, 36:09, 9:02 avg// 9:58, 9:01, 8:48, 8:21
April 4- 4.4 miles, 40:02, 9:06 avg// 9:46, 9:16, 8:49, 8:05

Even though the rest of the run was slower, my last mile was considerably faster this time around which means I am making progress despite having a few bad weeks here and there. I went into this run not expecting much and somewhat dreading it and ended up having one of the best runs I've had all year. After a tough week it was exactly what I needed.

2 comments :

  1. Work + friends is definitely better than running sometimes. Don't blame you for skipping runs to make the best of life! Your other runs seem like great paces!!! Way to go!

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  2. A single workout won't make you faster and skipping it won't make you slower. Our lives as normal people by day and triathletes by dawn/night is stressful as it is so stressing over missing a workout is counter productive.

    Besides, a skipped workout means you are fresher and better recovered so you can hit the expected quality of your next workout.

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