Eighty-seven seconds for the first Quarter and my forearms went tingly then numb. Quarter Two total was 3:02. I seriously thought about cutting my losses at a mile and a half and getting out of the game as the only other guy running just kept getting smaller on the horizon. Labored through the rest of the recession, final earnings at 24:53. Demoralized driving home. You put money in the bank and you think it will earn interest, or at least not lose value, but this ain’t like that. The fees and taxes punish you if you don’t keep working harder and harder. You just can’t sit on your stash and hope to reap any future rewards.
Moving on, Monday was a joyous run. Cold and windy but one of the rare times I ran solo, ran hard, ran tough, ran seven in the neighborhood. Middle 5K was probably under 20. Doubled up on Tuesday with the nightcap on the treadmill at the gym. You run a 6:30 pace on the treadmill at the gym and people stare at you like you’re insane. I even, gulp, did some weight work afterwards, which jacked my legs for the Wednesday run.
I canceled that job interview. My friends lampooned me, saying “Hi, I’m Dave. My hobbies include hanging with my boys and interviewing for jobs. Dave interviews cause he wants more $$$ or excitement or whatever, then turns it down saying ‘I don’t want your stupid effing job. I don’t want any job, jerk’.” It’s true. I told you I was a serial interviewer.
Lest that first paragraph remain incomprehensible, I ran tempo tonight and struggled mightily, mentally and physically. It was about 40 degrees, windy, muddy and it was only me and one other guy out there. On the warm-up he asked what my tempo PR was. Uh-oh. We agreed to go out in 6:20 the first mile and of course I shot a wad and embarrassed myself. Actually, I didn’t and don’t really care what he thought, I was just in pain, feeling overly negative and being hard on myself.
I’d have lap splits and all that nonsense but the new watchpod was on autolap and said I was running sub-6 pace. 6.02, 6.06, 5.59, 5.56. Which is odd because when I looked down at one point it said I was at 7:07 pace. It did tell me my peak HR was 185, average was 170. Is that useful? I joked with Gilbert about the “10K pace” and “80% effort” instructions. 10K pace? The Cap 10K is gonna be rough.
Man, I don’t know about this whole running thing. And now I remember why I curtailed the running log blog entries. I can just hear the voices out there. Maybe I gotta find something else. Orienteering? I’m pretty good with maps.
hahaha – it really does suck not to PR every time we do tempo, and we think there’s something seriously wrong. I tempo’ed last week and seemingly crawled to the end in 25:29. Did it feel like it was only ~37 seconds off my PR? No, it felt like I fell in Town Lake at some point during the run. The gravel felt especially slippery and unstable, thus causing me to to lose traction, thus causing me to notice that my right quad and left hip hurt (what?), thus causing me not to PR. Very easy to explain. I’m doing the Cap10 race as well – let’s see wha’ goan happen, Cap’n. I bet you go in the 38’s if not lower. If not, THEN quit running. See you there –