Day 148

I beasted on a couple of 6 mile runs over the weekend. On Sunday morning I ran a "catch me if you can" at Farmer Andy's. I spotted him about 3/4 of a mile and then I shot off to catch him. It took me nearly three miles to run him down...and then hit the metaphorical wall! I ran two miles at nearly 7:15 pace (very fast for me) so by the time I caught him and tapped him on the shoulder I wasn't able to keep up with him. But it was fun- there's something about running someone down that I really like. It breaks up the monotony of running and it helps keep me motivated.

Yesterday I did a solitary out-and-back along the railroad. It was on the course where I first started running again as an adult. I haven't run there in over a year. I remembered many hard runs on this road- runs filled with doubt, frustrating runs, painful runs, and runs that felt like failures at the time. But yesterday I realized that none of those runs were failures. I thought: I'm still here! And it was a triumphant realization. I thought back to the first time I ran 10's and how proud I was. Then I ran 9:45's, then I ran 9:30's and eventually I ran 9's. That was a BIG DEAL to me when I covered four miles in 36:00 flat. Yesterday I smoked 6 miles in 8:30's and could have gone faster if not for a stupid train PARKED on the tracks for several minutes.

I HATE those trains. They just park on the tracks like they own the place. Like nobody else's time matters.I might have approached 8:00's if not for the train. (Look at me sounding all "type A" today!)  One time before I came across a train parked on teh tracks and simply climbed over it and continued my run. This time there were about 20 cars parked there and so I thought I'd better follow the rules and just wait.

It was a good run- a good time too, considering I ran 10K's on back-to-back days. But what made the run most satisfying was rememebring all those "bonks" during previous runs. Those times I wanted to quit. The times I DID quit. I've quit on so many runs I can't even count them. But I haven't quit on running. I'm approaching 400 on the year. It looks like I'll need about 90 miles in June to be at 500 when the year is half over. I'm going to try to muster up a couple of big months now and try to put myself ahead of pace going into the Fall.