At day 396 of my 8 mile streak (1 year, 1 month) I had one of my best runs at Pigeon Forge Half. Consistent running. That is all you need to do to improve. Not only your speed, but your health. Run every day. Your heart gets more efficient, your muscles don’t atrophy, your joints get stronger. This improves not only your health, but your mind. You can do whatever you put your mind to, no excuses no putting off things, your mind becomes like a steel beam that supports an entire building. Perseverance.
The morning did not start off well. I did not wake up on time. I was in a deep sleep and must have turned my watch alarm off and rolled over. But in doing so I happened to turn it to run mode. When the power save reminder buzzed, I was awoken, heh. So being 20 minutes behind I thought why bother? Why drive an hour to the race? Then I figured I was already awake, it’s chip timed acceptable (thanks ChinaVirus), and I really needed a hard run this morning. The mind took over for me despite my subconscious making excuses.
The race went better than I expected. Last year was nagged with injury and inconsistent running but I had run 1:25:47 which is about 6:30/mile. I looked at the previous years race last night and thought, well I at least need to run that. That was my only goal. As the race started it’s spattered with sharp hills. I tried to keep a good pace through t
hem, knowing that there is a lot of race left and going out tooo hard would be bad.
It’s a hard thing to look down and think your pace is slowing and not just give up on pushing hard. You want to relax, take it easy and conserve. But no. I instead powered hard up each hill. Now, the benefit of a late start is you get to pass a lot of people. This is typically a mental boost but with the late start I was passing people who were running at slower speed, not faster. So it’s a false sense of increasing speed. It’s a slight mind trick because you think you are going faster, but in reality just maintaining.
Typically in a half I get to around 9 miles in before things start to hurt and go downhill. Heavier breathing, muscles getting worn, and pace harder to maintain. That point just happens to be an uphill turnaround of the out and back point. As I hit that I knew it was there was downhill on the other side of it and let my fitness take over. The hurting part never came. I continued pressing the gas slightly and before I knew it passed the 11 mile marker. The muscles never said nay.
2 miles, that’s not a lot unless you are at the back end of a half marathon. And amazingly I’m STILL feeling in control. No crazy breathing and legs turning over fine, not even tired. So I push through the next mile. As I pass 12 I realize that I could maybe PR. The final mile back is mostly flat and runs along the river. It also has some hairpin turns which slow you down a bit, but I was feeling so strong at this point there was no slowing. Only encouraging others and clear-headed focus as I stretched out my stride.
And finally the homestretch. Now in the last few hundred meters there is a false finish. You could just go straight to the finish line but instead are routed out and around then back to the finish from the opposite side. Dang it. This was actually the first time my breathing was heavy and body was giving signals to slow. But of course I didn’t, keep pushing.
And so with 1:20:47 on the clock I nearly PR’d on a tough course that may be a little long at 13.2. For comparison sake another nice data point is I ran my fastest splits for 10miles, 15k, and 20k. Comparing to earlier this year I ran 10 miles with nothing left in the tank all out 1:02.
Typically some speed training is done before a race, where you run faster than race pace and teach the body to get used to those paces and get more efficient at running beyond the comfort zone. I didn’t really do any of that. Just some tempo runs that were even slower than my average pace for this race. I’ll never be the fastest, but I can improve and be a better runner even after 13 years of calling myself a runner. No rest days for me, I’m sold. #8milesaday day 396 in the books.
Relentless Running 