I think about strange things when I run. That’s one of the best parts of long runs. It gives you time to get completely lost in thoughts. I used to do that a lot as a teenager and I think that I was smarter as a teenager than I am now. I also think that all that time thinking is partly why. Lately I’ve been thinking about losing my hair.
As a man who is losing his hair I began to wonder…just when does the last hair that matters fall out? There must be a point where you still look attractive but then you lose one more hair and all of a sudden you look old and balding. I wish I knew when that was. I would have a party. Well I guess it would be more like a funeral. Good bye hair. My ego and I will miss you greatly.
My run today went very well. It was about 65 degrees and sunny with some clouds when I left at 11:30 AM. Today reminded me how difficult it is to run in the Summer sun. I ran in the sun during the Spring and it wasn’t that bad. I assumed that would carry over to the Summer but it doesn’t. The clouds were against me as well. They avoided me like a reverse game of whack-a-mole.
During the beginning of the run, less than 2 miles into it, I got stuck waiting for a train. I took the time as an opportunity to stretch. I ended up having to wait for exactly 2 minutes which wasn’t too bad.
At the half way point I recorded my split time on my watch. I was amazed to see that it was under one hour! It was 59 minutes and some seconds. Since I felt good I was hoping to have a negative split but more importantly I wanted to finish in under 2 hours. It’s very rare that I complete the Rowe Half in under two hours.
When I was about a quarter mile away from the finish mark I glanced at my watch. It said 59 minutes. I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t going to break two hours but I decided to push myself just as hard as if I would. When I reached the finish I felt great. I stopped my watch but I was puzzled to see that the minute mark was still 59 minutes. I quickly realized that my previous glance was at my split time! My overall time was 1:59:17, a 9:11 average pace!
The run was hard and I’m glad. I don’t want to have easy runs because I won’t progress. I’d like to be able to be comfortable running 20 miles at a time but it’ll be quite a while before that happens. I am comfortable with distances of 13-15 miles now. That’s a huge improvement over one year ago. Also I feel much better at the end of these runs than I did a year ago.
Next week I’ll be running the Boilermaker. That’s throwing a bit of a wrench into my marathon training plan. I’m supposed to run a 14 mile long run that day. The Boilermaker is only a 15k. When I will probably do is run a long run in the middle of the week — no later than Thursday. I’m more concerned about marathon training than I am about tapering for a great Boilermaker time. I know I’ll be happy with my time at the Boilermaker and I really don’t feel the need to try to optimize it this year.
