Run for Central Park, 4 Miles
just got back from finishing the 4 mile Run for Central Park. It was hhhhhhot today, and so today’s lesson was to hydrate at the early stations and don’t worry about the few seconds that you lose. i skipped the first two and immediately got nervous after passing the second. i know that i can go further than 4 miles without water, but the conditions in a race are so different than when i’m doing training runs around my neighborhood. but i’m ok now, and as i said, it is the lesson that i learned today.
the truly exciting news is that i took some serious seconds off my average pace per mile and i feel really fucking great about that. i have been averaging 10:21 per mile for several months (which by the way is really fucking good and i am very proud of it and would probably be satisfied if i ran that pace for the rest of my life,) but i’ve been wanting to get it down, my goal would be 10:00 (though right now i’m struggling with wanting to do speed work and NEEDING to do stamina work.) BUT – today i finally made progress and got the average down to 10:03 and i feel so fucking good about that. the first mile was 10:22, second 9:44, third 10:23 (and that’s the one where i stopped for water), and the fourth 9:47. it’s an amazing feeling when you see that your training has paid off. because i’m the kind of person who will kind of blindly stick to a training program (or a singing thing or a weight loss thing or whatever) and just do the work do the work and not worry too much about quantifying it as i go. so then when i actually measure progress, it’s always kind of amazing to see the progess. i’m very proud of myself.
