6 Mile Run
Who: Alone
What: 6 Mile Run
Where: Struble Trail
This equals my longest run to date. And it was a tough one mentally.
When I was training by myself, I’d run every other day at most. Now that I’m gaming the system in preparation for training with a group next month, the training sheet has me running consecutive days. Yesterday’s run was 3 miles, and it was a really good one. But my body is used to a break after that, at least from running.
When I first started this one, my body immediately began protesting. “Woah, hey, wait, we just DID this,” it seemed to be saying. In the first mile I had foot and leg pains, side pains, and a feeling of sloshing in my gut. All of this was mental - my body just didn’t feel like running. But I pushed through the first mile and felt okay going into the second.
Goal was, again, 9 minute miles. I drove up to the Struble so I could run the whole thing with quarter mile markers, which meant I could see my pace every couple of minutes and try to keep each quarter mile on a 2:15 pace. The first four miles, after warming up, were no problem at all and in fact were a bit faster than pace.
The fifth one is always tough for me, and this one was no different. Still, I think I finished it right on a 9 minute pace though at this point, I was getting fuzzy.
The last mile was very tough. But I pushed on. And with a quarter mile left, I looked at my watch and it said 51:30.
One corner of my brain said… “Okay. Put just enough coal on the fire to bring it home. You can run a ten minute pace - 2:30 - and still reach the goal pace. No problem.”
Yeah. Right. The other part of my brain, the part that criticizes me whenever I do something like that… didn’t say anything. I think it hit me with a whip.
Final time: 53:24. I don’t know where I got that last quarter mile time. 8:54 pace.
Leave a Reply