Go Slow to Go Fast

I am feeling so much better thankfully, and yesterday I went out for my longest run so far. According to MapMyRun, I managed 6.1 miles. They were not fast miles, but they were my miles - I am claiming them. For the first time at a longer distance, I wasn't mentally trying to hurl each mile away from myself. Instead of internally kicking around "@#$#$% 3 miles", I actually kept increasing my time and distance just because I could. These miles were like my friends.

How might you ask????

Uh, by running at the pace of my neighbor kid's tricycle.

After registering for the half-marathon in March, I spent the week in panic mode trying to figure out what I need to do between now and then. Many, many thanks to ALL of you that have given me such great advice. Between your words of wisdom and the articles I've found, I am feeling so much better about my registration. The highlights?

1. Watch heart rate. This of course irritates me to no end because everything I read is telling me to keep my heart rate under 155 if I want to be able to keep running for very long. I don't even know if that is possible. I compromised yesterday and tried to keep my HR under 170. Generally for these 5K distances and when I run on the treadmill, it's around 183, so just believe me when I say I'm trying.

2. Long Slow Distance. Check. Husband approved the plan to schedule a long-distance run every Saturday or Sunday until the race in March. He'll either gym with the babysitting option or trade places with me at some other point in the weekend. I have 17 more LSD runs between now and the official race on St. Patty's, AND my brand-new-super-cool-very-manly-looking Garmin Forerunner just showed up Saturday afternoon, so now I'll know exactly how far I've gone and how quickly.

3. Run hills. Yuck. It's true though. When my personal advisers (ahem.... Luke :-) AND the running articles all say the same thing, I am forced to believe that the best thing for me to do will be to basically torture myself over and over on a weekly basis. Maybe bi-weekly.... monthly....?

I tell the girls at practice that they need to go slow to go fast as a way of encouraging them to find their own pace and not be pressured by others to run more quickly than they can maintain. It is such easy advice to give - just go slowly enough that you can keep running. It's sort of hard to do though. As I came across other runners, I confess that there was an embarrassed part of me that wished I was running faster. Maybe one day I'll be more zippy, but for now, with my 170 compromise, slow and tricycle-like is just where I am. And, if slow and tricycle-like manages to get me across a finish line 13.1 miles away from where I initially started, that will be just fine.