The continued prayer is, “Lord keep me focused. Keep my mind stayed on You. Help me to bring You praise. I know You believe in me. Please help me in my unbelief. Amen.”
I am feeling discouraged and very down trodden (or as discourage and down-trodden as a person like me can feel. I’m pretty pumped most of the time!). My brother-in-law completed his first 8k last weekend. He finished it in 51 minutes. No training. No rest. He went to sleep at 1am the night before and even lost an hour to Daylight Savings and still threw up a really respectable time!
Could I do the same? Sure. I’ve never done an 8k race, but I run 5+ miles on a pretty regular basis and I can usually manage a 10:00 min/mi pace on race day but it’s taken me a year to train up to that level and he did it without even really trying!
Sure, I ran 5.5 miles on Saturday (the day before his run) and finished in about 1:13 which included all the stops at traffic lights and of course, race pace is always quicker than regular training pace but STILL!!! And of course, he’s desperate for pain medication and he can barely walk right now and 5.5 miles doesn’t phase me in the least. But STILL!!!!
I mapped out the run and counted all the traffic signals. There were 26. Then I went online and did a quick search on what the average wait time is for a traffic signal. It’s 35 seconds. If I multiply 26 by 35 I get 910 seconds, or 15.17 minutes. So if I subtract 15 minutes from my time, I get approximately 58:30, which is a about a 10:37.8 min/mi pace. Which is still slower than Ryan’s pace! And I’ve been at this for over a year!
It’s really distressing. Why is it that some people just have a gift for running fast while others have to work so hard at it? It really isn’t fair.
*sigh* Ah Well…. Good for him!
I am reporting 4 activities today. I haven’t blogged in 5 days and I’ve run pretty regularly since then. There were six activities but 2 of them were walking less than a mile so I’ll be leaving them off.
3/09/11 - 3.59 Mile Run: This one was interesting. Jordan had TKD and Chris had Jayda at home so I dropped him off at class to punch and kick to his heart’s content while I ran the neighborhood. I saw a lady duck into the overflow wash and I love running washes and creek beds. There’s something about running beside flowing water. You usually get a full mile without having to stop for any reason and you have the different muscle workout of running on loose terrain. It’s as close as you can get to a trail run while still being in the middle of town.
This was a sloppy run. I couldn’t quite get it together. It may have been because it was a new route but my form and my stride was never clicking like it normally does.
I ran the last mile in my 5-fingers. That was nice.
3/11/11 - 3.16 Mile Run: This was a nice relaxing run. It was the usual route. Chris dropped me off at the BGC and I ran home. Nothing spectacular to report. I didn’t care much about my pace because I knew I was getting a longer run in the next day. I just wanted to get the miles in.
It was bliss. The weather was Southern California great and the temperature was perfect.
3/12/11 – 5.51 Mile Run: This was supposed to be closer to a 6 mile run. I mapped this run before I did it and it worked out to be about 5.83 miles.
I had decided to run across town to a friend’s house and have Chris pick me up when I got there. I was hoping to finish the route in an hour and a half. For one thing, I thought it was closer to 6 miles. Secondly, I wanted to account for traffic signal stops.
I finished in 1:13. It was a little hilly and I absolutely remember a time when I couldn’t run half that distance without seriously feeling like my life was drawing to a close. So this felt really good to me.
Another success is that I ran the whole route. It used to be that if I were running more than 4 miles, I would do 4 and 1 intervals. Today, the only breaks I got were at stop lights. I’m calling it a win.
3/14/11 – 3.02 Mile Run: I was at the dojo again waiting for Jordan to be done with class. I decided to run the wash again. Except this time, instead of the up and back route, I would exit the wash when I got to the next major street and run the loop on the street. There was a slight incline but the ground was solid.
I pushed myself pretty hard. I wanted to maintain less than a 10 min/mi pace since it was a relatively short run. I did pretty well for most of the run. Felt good.
I remember a time when focusing on speed robbed me of all the joy that came with running. Now I am discovering that I can run harder and still feel tremendous joy.
So I’m not the fastest or the strongest…. It could be much worse. I know far more people who can’t run 5 miles than I know who can. That’s something!
You said your BIL was in considerable pain now. That should be enough to convince you not to worry about his time. While I still advocate taking time off from running after a race, it used to be true that I physically COULD NOT RUN after a race for nearly a week, whereas now I could probably get right back to training, if I were so inclined. There's an unstated similarity here: A stupid male. Your BIL, and my younger self, were the kind of runners willing to push ourselves to such a ridiculous degree that we earned some impressive times (for beginners) but paid for it with interest. You have the much needed experience to get through your challenges without the same damage to your body and will eventually exceed your current performance, in due time.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lloyd! I have gotten faster, but it's coming along much more slowly than I thought it would. I'll keep at it though. See ya at The Great Race!
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