dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

Well, today I accidentally fell asleep while doing homework so I got out a little late.  because of this I started my run a little faster than normal going through the mile mark in 7:14.  I then slowly started speeding up slowly, but the effort stayed the same so I just let it happen, however once I got to about 6:30 pace I kind of leveled off and stopped speeding up.  I turned around at 5.55 in 36:58, 2 seconds faster than the 6:40 guy.  I didn't think anything of it and I started running back, however I subconsciously started to speed up and I made it through the next 1.05 in 6:27 which is under 6:10 pace. I was rather surprised because I didn't feel like I had sped up.  I kept running, not making any attempt to slow down, but still not making any attempt to run faster and the next thing I realize I am going through the next mile in 5:55.  At this point I started making a conscious effort to slow down but I still did the next half mile in 3:02.  After this I was finally able to slow down a bit more and I put in a 6:20 mile which ended up being my slowest mile going back.  I am not sure what it was but I couldn't seem to go any slower today, and I ended up averaging about 6:10 pace for the last couple of miles.  I finished the second half of my run in 34:02 (6:08/mile) for a total time of 1:11:00 (6:24/mile) for 11.1.

We took it nice and easy today.  I ran with Sasha and Josse and we didn't really get much faster than 8:00 pace the entire time we were running.  I think it was good for me after I averaged under 6:24 pace for my run yesterday and I averaged the second half under 6:08/mile.  Add on the fact that I did my run yesterday in the afternoon, so I was only going off of about 12 hours rest from the time I finished yesterday to the time we started running this morning a little after 5:30am.  Anyhow we finished in 1:35:36 for an average of 7:54.

Easy run with Sasha this morning.  I didn't look at my watch once while we ran so I don't know how fast we were going except that we started slow.  Sasha told me that we went through 1 mile in 8:53.  After we got back I ran an extra 1.05 to finish off.  I finished in 1:27:06.  My heel is slowly feeling better so that is good

I ran with Sasha and Brad this morning.  We kept the pace nice and slow with the exception of 3 quarters that we ran spread out throughout our workout.  We ran our first quarter when we were nearing up on the 2.5 mile mark and we ran it in 69.  We were planning on running it a little slower but I guess I just got excited.  We ran our second quarter when we were a little past 6.25 miles and we ran it in 67.  The last quarter we ran around the 7.5 mile mark and I came through in 59 followed by Sasha in 64.  So, this was a lot faster than I expected but I think it should be fine.  The purpose in doing this was to wake up our legs a little bit so that we can be ready to run a 5k on Saturday.  This is because I have done virtually no speedwork, other than a few tempo runs since I started running again after getting a stress fracture, and I have not raced since running the St. George Marathon in October.  So, I just wanted to wake myself up again and hopefully I can run well on Saturday.  On the negative side of things I have a cold now, so I am hoping that I get over it by tomorrow so that I don't have to deal with it anymore.

I have been sick the last few days and I started feeling a lot worse last night.  I woke up fairly regularly throughout the night and there was about a half hour stretch where I couldn't sleep at all.  My skin was warm to the touch and I was even sweating a little bit while I slept but I had the chills and I felt cold, which is partly why I couldn't sleep.  So, I didn't run in the morning and I only went to school to work on a group project for a class.  After that I came home and went back to bed until 2:30pm.  I wasn't asleep the whole time but I didn't move or eat much during that entire time period.  I also took my resting heart rate on Thursday and on Friday morning and both times I checked it my resting heart rate was about 84bpm which is incredibly fast.  I checked it one more time a little before 3pm and it had gone down to 66 which is closer to normal for me (54-60 is normal for me).  When I got up at 2:30 I was feeling a lot better so I decided to go to work for a while and I stayed until 6:00pm.  After that I came home and went running with Sasha at about 7:00pm.  So, the mileage is lower than normal and the run was later in the evening but I am feeling better.  Still not 100% but a lot better than I was.  I am just glad the fever broke when it did otherwise I would be wasting the 26 dollars I spent on the 5k I am running tomorrow.  Hopefully I can run well despite getting sick yet again.  It has been one heck of a winter for me.  I don't think I have gotten sick this often in years.

So, I have been sick for the last few days, climaxing yesterday when I could barely get out of bed in the morning and I ended up sleeping off and on until 2:30pm.  After that the fever broke but I am still not 100% better.  It was also cold this morning (27 degrees at the start) and due to a number of little things happening, one of which involved me leaving my timing chip at the finish 3 miles away and needing to return to get it, we barely got any warm-up in before the race started.

So, putting that into context, I ran my first race since the St. George Marathon and my stress fracture that kept me out for the better part of 2 months.  Sasha and I knew that we were going to be the only 2 people in the race that had a real chance of winning it so we decided to pace each other the first mile taking 1 minute intervals and switching off who was in the lead.  I took the lead at 5 minutes and Sasha decided to pass me around 5:40-5:50 into the race.  He held this lead over me and slowly extended it to about 15 meters by the time we hit the 2.5 mile mark.  During this time period I started to wheeze a little bit, and I was having trouble breathing normally, mostly due to the fact that I am still somewhat sick.  With about .5 miles to go I decided that I needed to make a move if I wanted to beat Sasha and I realized that if I didn't do it soon, I wouldn't have enough time to catch him.  So I put in a surge and caught him with about .4 to go and when we hit the marathon 26 mile mark I pushed it hard so that I could stay in front for the last .2 miles.  I could hear Sasha behind me as he started making a move to try and catch me once more and I put what little I hadn't yet used from the surge catching him and from pushing it harder with .2 left into staying in front.  This ended up being enough to win, and I came across 1 second in front of him.

 After the race I immediately started feeling a good deal of chest pain and congestion and I started coughing up a storm.  It was rather painful for a couple of minutes, but once I had cooled down somewhat the coughing and chest pain as well as a headache subsided.  After this I paced Josse to a very close win in the marathon, a race in which she didn't pass the second finisher until they had already hit the 26 mile mark, following which Sasha and I ran back to our cars to finish up.