Time for a tempo run!

It has begun.  Training time.  I wore a watch for the first time in many moons. The watch doesn’t lie.  It tells me exactly how quickly or slowly I ran my workout.  We were ahead of our required pace on our first training run - faster by almost a minute per mile.  I’m thinking that’s not good and here is why …

My brain says, “If you were a minute under pace on the first run, then you can surely be that much faster on the rest of your workouts.” That’s what one would think.  Here is the problem … I’ve done it before. I start out faster than the schedule requires, then somehow the schedule begins to close the gap.  Instead of lowering my time each week while increasing mileage, I find myself hanging right around the same pace. I need to work on that. My speed workouts need to be more effective.

There is another thought process that I repeatedly run through.  It goes something like this …

“I want to be faster than last year.”

“What does it matter?  At your age you should be satisfied with finishing the race.”

“If I trained better, or lost a few pounds, I could run faster.”

“Hey, you’re awesome.  Look how far you can run. Just keep running!”

“But my relay team would probably like me to be faster.”

“You are doing this for health and for fun, right?  Chill.”

And so on …

I think I will take it one workout at a time. Today is a tempo run – and there is a breeze – and it could rain. Tempo runs are hard, but then, so are speed workouts and long runs. I need to remind myself that this is running.  It’s supposed to be hard.  If it were easy it would be called “walking.”

Happy Running!