A Mile or More in My [Running] Shoes

This sunny Saturday afternoon I made my way to Central Park for my scheduled 9 miler. My legs are pretty dead after my speedy 5 miles on Wednesday followed by two consecutive nights of Insanity workouts, but this provided the perfect opportunity to work on my mental toughness.

When I started running it was easy to give in to the exhaustion and a lot of times, I talked myself out of finishing scheduled mileage because it was “just too hard.” I quickly discovered that with running, as with most things, cutting corners is not the way to get things done. (Ok, it gets things done, but the results aren’t the greatest.)

Eventually, I began to focus on the things I was telling myself while I was training. I began reminding myself that when I was feeling tired, there was still more in the tank, I just had to be willing to work and to use it. I had to tell myself to trust my training. Today was a good time for me to work on all of those things again.

When I finished I took a peek at my Garmin and noted my 9 miles were completed in 1:22:21. My jaw dropped. Further digging on Runners World confirmed that if I can maintain that pace during a half marathon, I will have my sub-2:00 half marathon (breaking my PR by 11 minutes). It’s all just a matter of putting in the work.