Excuse me, can I have a ride, I'm sick of running.

I completed an 8 mile run by myself today. Pam had to coach at a competition but I still needed to get my 8 mile run in and I knew if I went to the gym and tried to do it on a treadmill that I wouldnt finish. That's the problem with running at the gym, it's too easy to just hit the stop button and go home. However, when you are out on the road or trail you still have to run back so why not keep going.

For the first four miles I listened to my Ipod and felt pretty good. I didnt take my first 20 second recovery walk until mile 3 and then made it to mile 4 where I stopped for a quick stretch and refuel before turning around. I decided to turn my Ipod off for the run back. I am so used to 'noisy' runs that I had forgotten how quiet it can get. I also forgot how much harder the run is psychologically when there are no distractions.

There is a a part of the trail that is completely isolated from traffic, it was also the part of the trail where I didnt see a single person for at least 5 minutes. It was creepy quiet. I used to run in silence all the time when I lived in Los Alamos. I didnt like to use my Ipod back then because of the narrow roads, traffic and actual wild life animals. Has the city life made me lose track of what 'quiet' actually is?

It was a psychological trip. Suddenly my thoughts were right there center stage. Unavoidable. A girl passed me on her bike and all I could think was, "Excuse me, can I have a ride? I am sick of running now."

I walked today more than I did on Monday, but I am not concerned because I was only 4 minutes slower which wasnt bad. I hope to run another 8 miles on Monday ... hopefully I will run a lot more than today :)

Keep running!

Becoming more mentally tough.

I haven't had much time to blog in the past few weeks, but I have had time to workout! Despite having three jobs, I have found that there is almost always time, even if it's just a quick 30 minute run. Heck, sometimes it's only a 20 minute run, but guess what ... it's better than absolutely no workout at all.

Yesterday Josh and I hit the treadmills, side by side. Lately I have taken to using the 'Trail Blazer" setting. I enter the maximum speed and maximum incline and it varies both for the amount of time that I entered. Lately I have been doing a maximum speed of 5.5mph, a maximum incline of 2.5 for 30 minutes. On days when I am not working, I try to do 45-60 minutes.
When I was on the treadmill yesterday I wanted to quit after just 5 minutes because I was so mentally and physically exhausted from having worked all day. But once I got past the 10 minute 'brick wall' (a psychological mind-set which tries to get me to give up), I am good for the 30 minutes. The 'brick wall' will try to creep in from time to time, but once you get in the rhythm, it's hard to stop  :)
I think that being able to fight that 'brick wall' is proof that I am growing mentally. I am developing a toughness that helps me push past the difficult moments and continue so that I can succeed. In turn, that success makes me feel more confident in my running, which in turn develops my mental toughness even more.
If I can keep growing mentally, it will become easier to push past the 'weathers' when I start running outside. I don't have much tolerance for the cold, or wind or heavy rain (hahaha, wow!), and so that is something new I will need to learn to push past. Once I am dealing with that stuff, there will be no time to battling with the running 'brick wall'. There will be enough to deal with when it comes to the 'weathers brick walls'!

Anyway, I have a day off work today and so I must run! Happy Running!!!

Okay ... Where is the pie?!

Because today is Thanksgiving, I figured the gym would be quiet, but to my surprise there were quite a lot of people there. The gym closed at 2:00pm today so I guess anyone that wanted to get a workout in had to do so early in the day.
I went in with the plan to just hit the 'quick start' button on the treadmill  and run until I felt I couldn't go anymore. But I didn't want to over do it so I hit 'manual' instead and entered in 60 minutes. I said to myself that as long as I got to 30 minutes I was good.
So I started with a 2 minute warm-up where I worked my way up to 5mph (12 minute mile). I did that for 30 minutes and then upped the pace to 6mph just for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. I then brought it back down to 5mph and continue until I reached 37 minutes. I was getting a little tired but at this point I knew I could reach the 60 minutes, so I did a 2 minutes and 30 seconds recovery walk at 3.6mph and re-hydrated a little.
The last 20 minutes consisted mainly of 5mph with 2 more sets of 6mph for 2 minutes and 30 seconds and a final cool down for 2 minutes.
As exhausted as I was, I felt accomplished. In 60 minutes, I ran 5miles and burned just over 400 calories. Somewhere just before the 30 minute mark I very much wanted to give up, but I am very glad that I pushed past that because it was clearly psychological. I not once felt out of breath and my legs didn't really burn or feel tired so I know for the future to check all those before calling the workout complete because chances are that it is just psychological and I could very much just keep going.
After that I did just 5 minutes of the rowing machine so that I would feel that I got some upper body work done.

So having done all that .... please pass me the largest slice of pie!!!  ;)