I seem to forget each week that the reason I am doing this is to get better. This week the ‘improvement’ to meet was simply 3 more minutes than I ran last week. This next week it’s just running 2 more minutes. While I won’t call today’s run ‘easy’ by any means, it definately was doable. I might even have been able to complete it yesteday, though I got several other things done yesterday, so I shan’t complain.
Walking out to gegin the run is a bit interesting these days. It’s almost as if a part of me doesn’t want to do this. Oh, I’m not talking about the psychological battle looking at running 28 min, or 30, or trying to complete a 5k run. What I’m talking about is things like as I’m walking out, feeling like something is in my shoe, or in my sock. Maybe some sand, or smething. That said, once I start the music for the run, I don’t have that difficulty.
Since it has been a couple of days since I last ran, Friday evening in fact, I could feel the tightness of my legs as I started. Oh, not the same tightness as not having stretched, more along the lines of muscles realizing that they are going to have to do some work now.
The watch I regularly wear these days has a stopwatch function, though it can be difficult to use at times. Amoung the anoyances are the start/stop button does have a tendency to not start, or stop the stopwatch. The minute display is small and difficult to read, (is that 7, or 8?) but it’s on the watch, so it’s generally available. I chose not to take either a GPS, or a phone with me today, I went back to my simple MP3 Player, loaded up with the one track for week 8, and along with my keys that’s about all I took with me today. It’s not a mater of running light, just that today I decided that I didn’t really need to carry all that much that could confuse what I am doing. After all I’m going out to run, not really test new geek toys.
I had initially picked a turn around point that was about where I turned around last Friday. It’s a good point to turn around once I have my time up to where I want it and can start working on my speed a bit more. But as I was running I had a cood couple of minutes before I would have gotten there, and I looked at my watch and realized that not only did I not need to go that far, but that I was already close to my turnaround time. So where a fork in the trail existed, I turned around and started heading back.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I hate hills. Well, I realize that inthe long term I’m going to have to deal with them, and occasionally running up, and down them is going to happen. I got to about 2 minutes from the end of my run and off to my right was a long gentle sloap. I decided that rather thna run along the flat, and since I was that close to the end of my run, that I could probably handle running up that slope. Adn when I got to the top I realized I still had some time left, and off to my left was even more up-hill, if not nearly as steep. So I went that way till the end of run indicator came up. And my run was done.
Oh, my day is far from over. I’ll be heading to the gym this afternoon for another hour of workout, but I met the objective for this morning, and this week, even if it was longer than I like, so Onward.
Have fun, go run!
