My first thought about that was, "That's ridiculous; that goal is the reason for all of the day-to-day training!" The more I thought about it, the more I thought about how horrible I can be at being in the moment because I am always thinking long-term -- with running and with everything else in life. I always find myself thinking a few steps ahead, at times so much so that I miss out on the joy in the present. I am most certainly a planner!
But at the same time, I love the every day process with running. I enjoy training every day, or I wouldn't do it -- I'm not a professional after all! This is a fun, stress relieving hobby. It's "me" time and my main social time. It's so many things to me. Even if I knew today that I'd never run a 2:45 marathon, or even if I knew I'd never run another marathon at all, I'd keep running day-to-day. I love racing, but I also love my daily running time.
I don't think I'll get to a point where I'm not focusing on CIM often in my training -- if you can't stop thinking about it, don't stop working for it, right?! But I do think a good take-away for me has been to remember how much I enjoy the every day! Every run is truly a blessing.
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As far as getting comfortable being uncomfortable, my tempo pace range is now officially 5:57-6:10. My range has gradually moved down in the time I've been working with my coach, and this is the first time there has been a 5 at the beginning -- which is both exciting and intimidating. In general, I am supposed to start tempo runs towards the top of the range and work down. I had a 4 mile tempo on May 16 to start things off, and I ran it in 24:06 via 6:06, 6:04, 6:01, 5:55 (6:01 average). I ran it on a half mile dirt loop instead of my usual road tempo course because Missy wanted to run her tempo that morning too. She had to be at work early, and the dirt loop is much closer to her office than our road tempo route. I've run tempos on this loop before and loved it, because it's pretty flat and I can get into a rhythm well, but due to all of the recent rain and flooding we've had, parts of the track were very washed out and had horrible footing. While I was happy with my run and negative split, I also thought I could've hit 5:5X had I been on a road course...I'll get you next time, 5:59 average paced tempo!
Tempos are another good lesson about being in the moment, or being in the mile I'm in. I very rarely feel great (sometimes not even okay) during the first 1-2 miles of a tempo. I've had so many longer ones during which I struggled to hit my pace at the beginning, and then finished under pace in the end, that it doesn't throw me mentally anymore (it sure used to). The first 2 miles of this one were meh, but then I hit my stride on the second half. I try to focus on the mile I'm running and hitting my pace for it instead of how much total distance I have left. Tempo pace is definitely comfortably uncomfortable -- it's hard but sustainably hard (unlike speed work repeat paces that do not feel sustainable!). I hope I am on my way to feeling more and more comfortable at 5:57-6:10. Last year at this time, my tempo pace range was 6:15-6:25, and in 2015 it was 6:25-6:40, so I am thankful for that progress and plan to keep working!
I complained about the deep gravel and painfully rocky portions of the loop all day after the tempo, and then when I snuck in a quick second run between work and a board meeting that same evening, I ended up running the same dirt loop again in lieu of dealing with 5:30 p.m. traffic near the Y! Irony.
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| Recovering in the moment |
Good to know I'm not the only one who struggles with the first couple miles of a tempo. I usually feel like I'm going to die and then at the end I'm under pace, haha!
ReplyDeleteMy coach says that's how they should go if you're running them correctly -- starting at the top of your pace range feeling meh, then getting stronger as the miles go on. So I guess we've got it down! When I first started running tempos that feeling at the beginning would always freak me out, but now I just expect I'll feel like crap for the first mile at least, hah.
DeleteThat makes sense. I sound work harder to negative split races bc that's how I run all my best tempos. I always get in a race and freak out that I'm going to give up too much time in the first few miles.
DeleteI am a HUGE believer in negative splitting in races. I'm really good about doing it in half and full marathons, but in shorter races I get nervous about it too because you don't have nearly as many miles to make up the seconds you're over pace. In my 10K PR I ran really even splits (my 5Ks were 18:34 and 18:35, and my 1600 m splits were all within a 4 second range), and while I don't think that was bad I also wondered if I'd have been able to close with a faster final mile if I'd started just a tad slower in the first 2 miles. In 5Ks I usually positive split slightly so I need to work on that! At the Bradleyville 5K I negative split but only because the first half mile was uphill and the last half mile was downhill, hah.
DeleteAdd me to this list, too. I get the same thing with intervals - first rep is almost always the slowest, and I wonder how I'll be able to finish, let alone hit my paces.
ReplyDeleteIntervals are even worse than tempos! I'm with you on that one, too.
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