Today I went through a myriad of feelings toward the likelihood of running:
Noon - There is no way in hell I am going running today.
4pm - Maybe I will do my fitness video with Alison.
5pm - Okay, maybe I can handle one pyramid (F of FTL). Come on. One pyramid is actually easier than the fitness video. I can do one pyramid.
5:30pm as I am heading out the door to run - Let's do a tempo run!
No idea where that came from. And as it turns out, I wasn't quite up for a tempo run, not at this point. I think that this is due to a combination of factors. First and foremost: I haven't been running enough to competently do a tempo run. Coming in second place, though, is weather. At the same time, weather is a bad excuse because if I run more in warmer temperatures, I will get better at handling them. So basically I need to run more.
Actually, today I did need to walk. I got through ~5 minutes of the tempo run and out of nowhere, just started walking--akin to my 'meh' moment on the treadmill a couple of weeks ago. I walked for 2.5 minutes, then ran another 5, and repeated. During the 5-minute intervals, I tried to keep up a quicker pace. And this led me to develop a Plan.
Next time, rather than do a full-out tempo run, I will cut down the walking time to two minutes, then 1.5, then 1, then 30 seconds, then we will see where we are. This is great for a number of reasons. First and foremost: it is a plan. There. I have a plan. Plus it is a reasonable plan. Second, I can see myself improve as I go, which I hope will be encouraging. Third, I can program the toy for this plan, so I'll be able to see how things are going with concrete data.
If I had to describe today's tempo run, I would say that I lost the battle, but I'm hoping that I've developed a strategy for the larger War against Running Sloth (or whatever this war is that I am fighting). Five years ago, when I first started running (whoa!), I realized that it was futile to get mad at yourself when you failed at things. Instead, it was better to accept that you can only get better if you work from the point where you are. So yes, I wish that I had kept up the running more over the past month. But now I have the means to take steps toward improvement.
Also, there is another goal that I am trying to reach, which is to be able to competently do push-ups. I completely and totally suck at push-ups. So I've decided to work to get better at them. I'm not sure if this will in any way help my running, but surely it can't hurt. In case you're wondering, I managed five today and they were those cheater girl push-ups that are on your knees. But this is Day 3 of push-ups and they do feel better than Day 1 of push-ups did. Steps towards improvement, it's all that you can ever do.
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