Progress

I had lots of plans for yesterday, and the day started out fine with a yoga class.  Then I sat on the couch for about 5 hours, then took a 2 hour nap, went out to dinner and then spent a nice evening with Tom.  Oooh, life is tough.

Today I got up off my ass, did some housecleaning and just got home from a run.  I think this is what the fancy folks call a "tempo run" and yikes! I feel like I'm entering a whole new phase of running.  I went out for 6 miles, and the middle 4 called for a 10:30 pace.

10:07
10:24
10:37
10:41

Once again, I start out feeling like a rock star, then slowly slip on the pace thing.  I set Gary to bleep if I went under 10:30, and he was mostly quiet the first 2 miles (mostly), but really started acting up on the third mile.  I'd hear the bliddely-bleeeeup! and speed up a bit, only to get bliddely-bleeeeuped again a minute later.  Fucker.

All in all, I was pretty happy with this run.  I'm certainly not a big fan of the "speed" thing, but I think it's good to be pushed out of my comfort zone, even just a little bit.  It certainly isn't boring.  I still found myself taking quite a few stopped water breaks, but less than the last speedwork run I did.  I think these'll just naturally fade out as time passes.

Of note, I ran up that unavoidable 250' hill to my house, and today I made it non-stop.  Granted, it was at a pace of something like 15:00, but I didn't stop.  Progress!