Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A victory pretending to be a failure...

I'm in week 8! Today was my first 28 minute run... or it was supposed to be. I've got a great story to share with you about feeling like I "failed" but then realizing I'm in way better shape than I imagined. :)

I'll start by sharing that Daniel's Aunt Pat (Harriet's sister) is visiting from Florida, and was kind enough to join me for my run today. We decided to run at Glendoveer partly to avoid the "full-court press" from the gym salespeople (inevitable when you have a guest visit with you), and partly because it sounded like fun. I know that Glendoveer is a little over 2 miles long and have walked it often with some of my girlfriends, so it is a familiar and fun trail. Especially on a beautiful morning!

We headed out and I turned on my Week 8 mix from DJ Steveboy (found him through the C25K website - check him out at www.djsteveboy.com/intervals.htm). Apparently techno is my favorite running music! I rely on the recording for each week to tell me when to walk and when to run (it has tones that go up or down, and the bpm of the music changes when it's time to run). I knew that this week had a 5 minute warm-up, 28 minutes of running, and a 4.5 minute cool down walk. As we approached the end of the trail I was surprised that the 28 minutes wasn't up yet - I've been completing about a mile and 3/4 during my previous runs and thought I should be close to be done. I peeked at my ipod to see how much time was left over, which I don't usually do. I like to be oblivious to how much time is left so that it doesn't overwhelm me. Plus, it's a nice mental discipline to just focus on the moment instead of focusing on getting done. When I peeked at the time left over, the ipod displayed 5 minutes and I assumed that meant we only had 30 seconds left... yippy! So I kept running and kept watching the countdown tick off... 4:30 came and went... then 4:20... I assumed that I'd missed the tones telling me the run was over and announced that we were done. YAY! We did 2 miles of running - woohoo!

When we got back in the car I was checking out the track and trying to figure out where I'd missed it. Sometimes if I don't have the music up loud enough I don't hear it. Call me tone deaf, or maybe a little too distracted... I like to consider myself a zen master. :P

I noticed that the full track was only about 32 minutes long, which didn't add up. A minute and a half of an intro from DJ PodcasteyGuy, a 5 minute warm up walk, 28 minutes of running and a 4.5 minute cool down should have been 38ish minutes... oh no! I didn't finish my run!

For those of you who know how selectively OCD I can be, you're probably already laughing. The thought that I didn't complete my run makes me feel like I should go and do it over. I wasn't sure how short I'd cut the run until I got home and downloaded the track again and listened to all the transitions. It turns out I'd cut my run off EIGHT minutes short... AH!

So here I was, sitting and beating myself up for "falling behind" two weeks - when it occured to me that I'd run two miles in those 20 minutes. OH! That means apparently I'm comfortably running a 10 minute mile and had no idea! "Comfortably" might be an exageration... it was my first trail run of this training session and I was whining for it to be done 8 minutes early... but I had no idea we were running so fast.

So - the bad news is I only did 2/3 of my first run of this week. The good news is - I'm getting faster! I'm going to choose to let this run "count," rather than being OCD and making myself do it over. I've got the correct track completely installed on my ipod now so that when I run later this week I don't have to worry about it. Stay tuned for more updates - I'm sure I'll have some great stories to share with you guys after my next run... jumping from 20 to 28 minutes is going to make for some funny "mental game" commentary. :)

I only have 5 runs left in the Couch to 5k training program, and less than three weeks until my first race! I can't believe I'm almost finished! After that 5k I will start training for a 10k, and then it's on to the Half Training. Wee!

1 comment:

  1. am so proud of you...keep up the good work

    ReplyDelete