This Week in Running – Where is my Mind?

Hello everyone! This week is a fun one for me. My wife is on a well=deserved break from family life and spending time in LA with her best friend from college. I’m on a work from home/vacation type thing. Of COURSE the first full day I’m in charge is a snow day. The older kids don’t have school, so that will change my planning a bit. On regular days, Ben and I do pretty well together. We play with toys and I pretend to be the big bad wolf. I can handle that.

Last week in running had a couple of things go well. I ran my first double digit run since the Rehoboth Beach Marathon in December. I hit 28.2 for the week, which is quite a bit for me these days. I’ve been missing from my runs though, or maybe I haven’t…

The week started with 4.5 treadmill miles. 33 degrees and raining just wasn’t all that appealing. 33 degrees and rain was the theme for the week. I didn’t feel super awesome, so I eased my way into getting up to speed with a progression run. It’s my favorite kind of run, so I posted about it once long ago and if a snow day has you bored you can read it here. I got up to a 7:08 pace, which I was happy with, but I did have to work pretty hard to hold it for a mile.

Wednesday was 2.3 miles with friends (Alissa, Wade and Morgan, hope I didn’t forget anyone!) before going off to my kettlebell workout. Speaking of kettlebell workouts, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THEM. I’ve gotten stronger and my functional mobility continues to improve. The tradeoff is that working hard with weights has given me a bit of a dead-legged feeling on many runs, but I’m good with that right now. Quality time with friends is important! If you’re competitive, you can use my Quality Time Calculator to see just who is the best at quality time with friends. Yes, I made one. I had some time to kill haha.

Thursday was a fast 5 miler with Brooke and a cup of coffee. Every run with Brooke turns into a tempo. We seriously need someone to pace us.

Saturday was a Valentine’s Day fun run. The weather was a “wintry mix” as they call it. 5 brave souls decided to head out for the run. Thanks go out to Harry’s Bakery downtown for hosting. Your breakfast sandwich was DELICIOUS. Sorry, no pics of said sandwich. It didn’t last long.

Sunday ended up being long run day. I got 10 miles in, right at an 8:00 pace! As I said earlier, this was my first double digit run in quite a while. It was tougher than it used to be, but I think I could have done a few more 🙂

Me, on Sunday.

The weather was AWFUL. I ended up cold and soaked, a bad combo. When I got home, the shower felt so good that I literally couldn’t get out. Thanks to all that rain, there’s no shortage of water 🙂

So about the title of this post… where is my mind?

I keep thinking that I’m going to suddenly find that drive to get faster. The track will call my name, or the thought of pushing my limits on a 5k will suddenly seem appealing. I know the awful weather doesn’t help, but it’s more than that. I’m content with how I’ve been running. Isn’t that good? Why do I feel like it’s not enough?

I’m enjoying whatever you call this kinda-sorta training thing. I’ll be ready to run my races. PR? Nope. I’ve ALWAYS chased PRs, so it’s weird to not chase them. I still want to PR something eventually, but that’ll have to wait.