Monday, November 21, 2011

Day 71 (11/20): 8 miles / 1:12:43

I have to admit, I'm starting to second guess whether my pre-planned routes are as long as I thought they were.  I'm certainly not concerned if I'm off by a tenth of a mile in an eight mile run, but I'm just having a hard time believing that I'm capable of running 8 miles at a 9:00 pace.  I'd love to believe that I am, but I'm definitely planning to drive my route again just to be sure.

Nevertheless, I'm thrilled with today's run.  After pushing myself harder than I should have yesterday, I was a little concerned that I was asking for trouble by not resting the body parts that might seriously need rest.  Unfortunately, this is a damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don't scenario... I could take it easy and blame the threat of injury when, in all reality, maybe it would just be me making excuses for not pushing myself past a minor discomfort.  On the other hand, I could be pushing my body beyond its limits with the hope that an injury would allow me to be lazy for a few days.  I can honestly say that I'm not sure which is actually happening here and I'm finding it kind of annoying that my own mind games are getting in the way.

With that said, I did push past my discomfort and found that I actually felt a lot better than I thought I would.  Clearly, my leg is not going to fall off and, after giving birth, I'm pretty sure I can handle a lot more pain than what I've been dealing with for a few days (and trust me when I say that what I've felt the last few days can hardly be classified as 'pain').  I was so glad to get past it and find that, after the first mile, I felt great.  My mile times made me a little nervous because I seemed to be going a lot faster than I thought I would be capable of, but if my route is, indeed, accurate, than I can honestly say that I'm much further along than I thought I would be at this point.  At the completion of my run I enjoyed one of those "I know I can do this" moments... and that, in itself, feels pretty damn good.

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