After such a disappointing attempt at a run on Thursday I approached my long run today with more than a little trepidation. I didn’t even bother to run yesterday in the hopes that a day off would help me get through 16km today. Thankfully today was a good day and while it wasn’t fast (nor should it be I guess when it is called a “long slow run” on the training schedule), it was comfortable and for the most part enjoyable. It was in fact what I just like to call a really nice run.<\/p>\n
I know everyone has had enough of this winter but I have to say that without a doubt I prefer a day like this over the heat of July and August. At -9C (16F) with bright sun and limited wind it was quite simply gorgeous outside. Today also marked the first day in months that I ran on sidewalks rather than roads. What a treat to not have to think about cars or have to be constantly moving into the slushy sides of the roads. That isn’t to say the sidewalks were perfect. For the first 3k I was running on an ice\/slush\/snow mixture and since I was running out and back, I had to finish on that as well. In the middle of the run I was also on similar footing. But some City of Ottawa employee has performed miracles on a big section of one of my favourite paths, leaving it as dry as on a summer day. Summer footing combined with comfortable winter temperatures? It doesn’t get any better than that in my book. <\/p>\n
Today I gave myself permission to run something comfortable and to not push myself for anything other than completing 16km. I had hoped to run it without stopping but when I had a few I.T band twinges at the 9k mark I stopped my watch and gave myself a “one song break” while having a few raisins and almonds. The break was perfect; as soon as the song was done I felt like running again and the twinges were gone. The route I took involves doing several gradual hills and even those felt good. My final pace was around 6:17min\/km, not exactly fast but reasonable for a slow run, particularly since I know in the snowy areas I was probably doing closer to a 6:30 pace. <\/p>\n
One of the tricks I used today was to just enjoy the moment. Every time I caught myself thinking about how hard the upcoming 30k race is going to be, or how I was running faster at this time last year, I quickly shut those thoughts down. Instead I focused on how good I was feeling and how beautiful it was outside. At the top of each hill I thought about how amazing it felt to have made it up without too much of a struggle. Going down the hills I thought about how relaxing it is to just let gravity pull you forward. I often spend ridiculous amounts of my running time thinking about pace and distance and whether the run is preparing me for my next challenge. It is very difficult to simply run “in the now”. But when you manage to pull it off, even for short times, it is well worth the effort. <\/p>\n
Finally, thank you to everyone who gave me words of encouragement after that last disappointing run. All of your kind words were appreciated!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After such a disappointing attempt at a run on Thursday I approached my long run today with more than a little trepidation. I didn’t even bother to run yesterday in the hopes that a day off would help me get through 16km today. Thankfully today was a good day and while it wasn’t fast (nor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-running"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3amQ2-bF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}