Happy Monday and weekly check-in

[ell]

Firstly:
Congrats to losingit and everyone who raced this weekend! If you haven't done so already, tell us how your race went, we'd love to hear about it and congratulate you!

Second:
Inspiring quote for today:
Take care of yourself. Eat well, rest, train hard and smart, make time to think and breathe. Be intentional with your time.

-Kristin Armstrong, Author and runner

And lastly:
Any difficult goals you're stretching for this season? How do you deal with the fall/winter blahs and bad weather if you're Northern Hemisphere and the transition to summer race readiness for those of you in the South?

Comments

[sophinisba]

I ran my second 10K race on Saturday! I had fun and felt good about it afterward even though I got a slower time than at this other 10K I did back in June. And I mean, I hadn't specifically been working on getting faster, but I have been running (what feels to me like) a lot the last couple months and it was disappointing to feel like that hadn't paid off. Of course I could tell myself that the running I've done in between was its own reward, and I do enjoy it, and I do still think I can get faster if I work on it. Still, it makes me feel uncertain about making goals for what to do over the next few months. After the 10K in June I was all, "I will do the same distance but much faster on October 2nd!" and my friends said "Yes, I'm sure you can do it!" But I didn't, so should I bother setting goals for what I'll be able to do by March (since I probably won't be racing over the winter)? I don't know.

I would appreciate advice on this! I don't need a peptalk to make me feel better about Saturday's race, because I really did enjoy myself and I feel good about it. But I'm just not sure what to do next or how to deal with not having met goals I set earlier.

[ell]

Well, getting good at running slow and long is totally different from getting fast...as I well know. So, you felt good at the end of Saturday - better than you felt at the end of the one in June? If so - then yes, the training helped and was good for something :-) If no, I have reams of excuses for why not. sleep, weather, stress, crowds, lack of crowds, etc.

If you want to get faster - join me in the interval plan that ilanarama outlined for me above. I'm going to target a turkey trot 5 k to see if it's working. you could do the same - if you do better on the 5 k than you did for the fastest 1/2 of either of the 10ks, then it worked :-)

Just a note - I still haven't come anywhere near as good as I did in my first 1/2 marathon 2 years ago. My running has improved a lot, my stamina is great, I love running, but still I'm 5 minutes or more off that time. I'm choosing not to worry about it and still set goals, just not that goal...

[sophinisba]

Heh, actually I felt worse at the end of the race Saturday than at the other one in June, but probably felt better for more of the course. And yeah, I can see some excuses - more hills on this one, not as many people cheering, not as much sleep the night before.

And yes, I was looking at that interval plan and thinking I should give it a try. The weather's getting colder where I am and pretty soon I'll be doing most of my running indoors, so I think it'll be easier to keep track of distance and speed over the next few months than it has been over the summer when I running in a lot of different places outside and mostly measuring by time. I don't think I want to do a Thanksgiving Day race but maybe something in December or January, or maybe I will just wait on that for a while. Thank you for the ideas. :)