Today I had a 3 mile run. I wanted to write a little bit about it cause it was kind of harsh, despite the fact that it was only a 3 mile run! I rested yesterday, cause frankly I just ran out of time to run, so I felt fresh and ready to go. My plan was to end my run at Panera Bread cause they were giving away free lunch to Military people, sweet! When I walked outside it was close to 60 degrees, and yes it is 4 days before Christmas, and I was really excited to see how fast I could get to Panera since I knew at least 2/3 of my run would be flat or down hill, which never happens where I live.
So I looped my street once and headed out to high st to run the 1.7 miles south to Panera. I felt ok and was trucking along pretty well until I turned. The ground was wet. Not just wet, but saturated. (The news actually said that today's weather was going to be "saturating rain". They were right.) Despite the fact that it had stopped raining and the sun was shining, everything in sight was completely covered in water. The sun was shining so brightly in the Southern sky by this point in the day (noon) that it I had to look down to the ground in order to run. But when I looked down, the reflection was so bad from the saturated earth, that I couldnt look down either. I literally had no where to look, which is hard when you are running on a crappy sidewalk next to a busy street.
Besides the sun, there was the wind. It was WINDY out today. It was so strong from the south, which of course is where I was heading, that it felt like every time I picked up my feet, they didn't go too much further from where they started. I felt instantly defeated in my attempts to make a great time on this run. I pushed aside the feeling of being bummed and tried to think of just making it at this point. I couldn't see and I was barely moving. What the heck!
Every time I have to run in the wind I want to quit. It is really hard to run in the wind! Bad weather, you can deal cause that is just being uncomfortable, but when you are pushing against the wind, things become kind of ridiculous because you tend to not move anywhere, which is the point of running. There is a movie I watch once called The Spirit of the Marathon, which is a really good movie to get you motivate. I lied in my bed relaxing as much as I could the night before I ran my first marathon, trying to channel excitement for the next day . But there is a scene of this lady, I forget her name, but she is a world famous long distance runner, and there in this scene she goes out and runs like 20 miles next to an open road in Montana. When she is done she talks about how intense the wind was, but how it was important to train in it. Every time I have to run against the wind I think about that scene and how much harder it must have been for her, and where I wanted to be as a runner one day, and then I push through it.
I cranked out my last 1/2 mile with what felt like a 10 min mile time. I was disappointed and glad to be done. The moment I stopped running my lungs and neck started burning. Burning like I hadnt done any cardiovascular activity in years. I dont know if the pain was cause I was getting stronger, or getting weaker. I guess ill find out later. It was a horrible pain, but it subsided after a minute or so of deep breaths.
As I was pacing around trying to catch my breath I looked down at my phone to see my time. 25:18. Honestly I was blown away. Not only was that one of my fastest times, I felt like I did horribly, which means that if the weather would have been right I could have gone so much faster. I decided that I should try not to beat myself up when running and just try my best.
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