morning, 2015.
since we last spoke, i've been running. i got wimpy about cold when it got cold, but i've still been running. i ran a 2 hour half marathon in october; that's not that impressive but it was a race/party weekend with friends, and these friends don't party with just gatorade, so i consider that an achievement.
i also agreed to run Hood to Coast 2015 with old Ragnar relay friends. do you know about HTC? it's a real thing, promise. ask the internet if you are curious. there is apparently a movie, even? anyway, we lotteried in, so that's happening at the end of august... and with another member of that ragtag team, i said we should start excel spreadsheet training! ... we haven't quite gotten the logistics in place, but this does mean that i have been tracking all my runs since dec 18.
what that tracking tells me is that:
- i have been running frequently -- 8 times in the last 2 weeks (and it warmed up a bunch, so it's all been outside)
- i have been running between 30 minutes to an hour, but usually about 40-45 minutes at a time
- i have been running slow. ... i haven't been wearing my garmin, but i know what i'm doing, and it's called: running slow.
this morning, january 1, i woke up, i drank coffee, i had toast and PB and banana, i pet the dog, i dithered on facebook, and i went for a run. it was not warm or sunny, but i had layers and i was fine. i ran for 50-ish minutes, and it was totally fine. i'm pretty sure i negative splat; my music died halfway through (sidenote: phone battery, you are the jerkiest), and after that i just told my brain to zone out and i could feel i was running faster. ... but in the first 20 minutes, i somehow *lost faith* in my ability to run. i don't know what was up, really -- but, my brain kept thinking i couldn't do it, and i had to stop to readjust something, or take a picture, just make some excuse for not running for 10 seconds and then start again.
... why? i wasn't out of breath. (nor the slightest hungover, since you were wondering.) the backs of my legs are a little sore from some exuberant cross training yesterday, but i've run in plenty worse condition. i'm heavier than i want to be right now, but i'm hardly unable to run. ... i don't know what my brain was thinking, cuz it was clearly my brain and not my body that lost the plot, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
... so. some re-focusing is in order.
this month -- january -- the plan is to go back to tracking distance, not just time. and to start adding runs of at least an hour or longer.
next month, the plan will be to arrange a race schedule for the year. this is a bit complicated because (long story) i'm not sure where i will be living when... but at least i can plan something in e.g. april.
i should probably also go back to run blogging, because i think that's a way to remind my brain that i'm actually a Runner, like not just i am able to run, but i Actually Run Frequently and Long Distances, with Capitalization N' Shit. so... yes. that's also the plan for this month.
forward motion, right? right. forward.
