This morning I continued my training with a 13.66 miles run. This included a stiff wind and elevation, along with a pretty boring route. All this made for a potentially boring run. So, you may be wondering why I chose it. Well, first let's look at the route. It's shown below. Click on the link if you want to see more of it.
You can see and play this run here.
As you can see, it is a circular run. I don't always run from and to the house, but on longer runs it beats getting the car all sweaty. As a rule, I don't like running along noisy, busy roads, like that one on the left of the run, Custer, but I force myself to. Why, it makes me focus. It makes me take my mind elsewhere. The top of the run is along another busy road but at least the run is a little bit more interesting, the path is curvy, the new trend in north Texas. The curvy part on the right, followed by the next straight road are both uphill. What, so far into the run I decide to run uphill? Yes, by design. I need to test the legs on inclines and there aren't that many around here so putting them in towards the end when the legs are not so fresh takes a bit of the routine out of the run and makes me think about my pace. So, what were my splits.
What does this tell me about my run? I pretty much started off on the pace me and my body have agreed on over the last few weeks. Then something strange happened, I got slower. This continued for the next 3 miles. Why? Well, it was along the long, boring stretch of very busy road. I was negotiating with my body to start to relax. My left calf was telling me it didn't want to and my right big toe reminded me that it wasn't happy last week. Well, I took a look at my running style and if was a little off so I adjusted it, opened my stride just a little without increasing my speed and there you have it dropped from 9:40 to 9:13 over the next mile. Mile 8 was a downhill stretch, just after a very nice uphill and curvy section. Then it was on to the uphill section from 9 through 11. That's when my bind kicked in and kept the pace up, focusing on points in the distance, maybe a stop sign, or a traffic light, something to focus on and push through the challenge being put on my body. The next 2 miles, just before I hit the final stretch we really the result of the uphill section. My body finally relaxed. Well, I turned into the final stretch and ran into the strong breeze again all the way home, but it is a little more downhill than flat so I picked up my pace again allowing my mind to focus on the finish and the reward that waited for me... Gatorade and a hot Epsom Salt bath, after a few stretches. So, as you can see, a run isn't just a run. When planned instead of just discovered as a lot of training runs are, you can set yourself different challenges. From dealing with a boring stretch to tackling inclines, even using the wind to test you. I so prefer to run on a trail through the trees, but sometimes you have to change the norm. I'll talk about the mental game in the next post.
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