Being all hard-core runner

After falling during your run, walk past a young girl.  She looks at your knee and says, 'You're bleeding!'  You answer, 'Oh yeah, I know' and walk off nonchalantly.

Bonus points: be wearing your Half Fanatics singlet at the time.

PS - If you're curious, running has mostly been going well, apart from a slight cold that I had last weekend.  More updates to come soon.

The mental game

It might seem like running is primarily a physical activity, and I guess if all you wanted to do was go out and run, it would be.  But when you add in racing or improving or anything like that, the mental component becomes much more important.  It can be hard to keep going when you're in the middle of a race, or you're not feeling great, or you don't feel like running any more.  But part of succeeding in this sport is finding a way to get beyond that.

I think that one of the problems that I have been experiencing over the past little while (apart from the physical ailments) is the idea that I keep repeating the same training plan over and over with no end in sight.  This is probably because that is essentially what I have been doing since around last June (!).  I did change the actual plans but the principles remained the same for each.

A few days ago, I realized that actually, I was embarking on the last six weeks of my half-marathon plans (I'm lying to myself, of course, because I am doing another one in June, but sometimes mental toughness develops from lying to yourself).  Acknowledging that there is an end point has been very encouraging.  Today, for instance, I also realized that I am 25% of my way through this plan.  A quarter!  While this means that there is still 75% to go (less encouraging), it is a good way of getting myself to go out and run.  I'm doing fine with this plan so far.  I can keep it up for another 4.5 weeks.

I tried skipping again yesterday.  It's still hard.

I can haz speedwork

Something important that I discovered between Sunday and today: the distance that I ran for my speedwork on Sunday was about twice as long as I was supposed to go.  Hence why it was hard to run at 90% of my energy level.  Today, I ran the right distance.  And it was awesome.  And I owned every interval.  And I love speedwork.  These are not words that you hear too often from a slow and steady runner.

Apart from the Speedwork of Awesome, I also ran three miles.  It was just fine.  Maybe a bit humid out, because I'm somewhat sweaty, but on a scale of 1-10, I think it gets around a 7.  Also, I got out and ran, which was an achievement.  I meant to go this morning, but for reasons unknown to me, I woke up last night at 3am and didn't get back to sleep for a long time.  Today I even went in the dark and everything.  Yay!

Could it be that I am gradually shaking off my running funk?  Because that would be almost as awesome as speedwork.