This morning I sort of wanted to be part of the big 10K race down Yonge St. but I never got around to signing up. Part of me just didn’t want to knowing that I’m still slow and in need of a bit more strength. There’s always next year.
So, instead of doing 10K, I came into RR this morning and ended up doing just under 12K. Go figure.
For the first 5-6K I was doing well and keeping up with the group. Shock! Yeah, that’s new for me. Each time we had a walk break it took more and more effort to get back up to speed. There were a few times I slowed down a little bit to lower my heart rate a little bit. A few times, when the group pulled metres ahead I decided to pump a little bit harder to catch up, and I did. Every time, I focused on my glutes and hamstrings and meditated on the word “activate!” They tightened up and that gave me the boost to keep going.
Eventually though the group pulled up quite far ahead. The instructor stopped to talk to someone that he knew that was running in the opposite direction, so I was sort of on my own. I knew I had some juice, so I pushed harder to see if I could catch up like I’d done before. I tensed up and pushed. I checked my Garmin and saw that I was running just under 6:00/km which is…wholly unmaintainable for me. Ha! My instructor caught up to me and said “Jason, you’re really pushing yourself today!” I was. I told him that I had a bit of an urge to catch up to the rest of the group. He looked at his Garmin and said, “what does your watch say?” We agreed that I was at about 6:00/km. He said: “they’re running at about 6. Even if you try hard, you won’t catch up.” Ugh! Yeah, of course he’s right. Still, I told him that I wanted to push harder: it’s only in pushing that I’ll get better.
I did catch up with them, but only because they were stopped at a stop light. Go figure. I was glad to get a bit of a breather after really going at it. Thing is, I think that extra effort really made me run out of steam. I really slowed down after. I just couldn’t drag a faster pace out of my legs. My glutes and hamstrings were totally fatigued, making it hard to just move. I managed to complete the last 3-4K kind of slowly, but it was a struggle.
You know, despite running out of energy, pushing for that interval between 6 and 7K was amazing. I really felt great just going for it. This is all incentive to just continue to keep pounding the pavement.
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