Sunday, January 6, 2013

I'm a schmo

A few weeks ago, probably the last time I ran, I felt amazing! I left the house with confident, likely listening to the Grouplove album, sky blue and beautiful, brisk winter air. It was great. I use mapmyrun on my phone to...map my run. I calculates my mileage, time, route and calories. I love it. When I set out for said run, I was so surprised when I hit a mile, and even more surprised that it said I did it in about 6:30! Rockstar!! It feels like whenever I have a slow first mile it takes forever to catch up or work that number down. Since I was starting with a low number I just went with it and cranked out a 3.76 mile run in 34 minutes. I was stoked I averaged a 9 minute mile!

Friday I decided to run, having the same confidence although a bit lessened since I hadn't run in a month. Same settings. Blue sky, brisk air, already warmed up. I started running and happily awaiting my phone to chime "1 mile, time __ minutes". I kept waiting, running and waiting some more. Nothing. Where the heck is this mile marker? It was at least another half a mile up the road. When it did chime in, it said "1 mile, time 10:30 a mile". I was so disappointed. I realized that my last run had glitched and reported too soon. That kind of killed my motivation. If I had to stop at a stop light, I often used it as an excuse to walk and take a break. I stopped to stretch my calves after a particularly gnarly and slow hill climb. Then almost at the end of my run, a huge diesel truck decided to gun its engine right next to me!! The fumes quickly got into my lungs and I began coughing. I held my elbow up to my mouth to breathe and keep the fumes out, and I also stopped. The dude turned into the next driveway. I was SO tempted to tell him to get a smog check, but I resisted. I ran the rest of the way, disappointed in myself and the run. It really is like starting from scratch. And I have a half-marathon in 3 weeks!! Wow, that just put things into perspective!!! I just hope that they block all the diesel trucks from the route. I was coughing all day!

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