distance: 3 miles (outdoors)
total program distance: 3 miles
pain level: naught
On the bus coming home last night I read the form chapter in The Competitive Runner's Guide. He basically said don't try very hard to correct your natural form, but gave some tips to keep in mind. I tried a few last night. My favorite was imagining that I was holding potato chips between my middle fingers and thumbs to keep from straining my hands. I have a tendency to run with them straight out, alá the chase scenes in cop movies, which now that I've thought about it would probably hurt my forearms after 4 hours of holding them that way. So I tried to focus on that and on making sure I wasn't overstriding. I think I did well on both counts.
The main thing I did last night was try to self-monitor my heart-rate and breathing. What I noticed is once I got up the hill to the track and got in a rhythm, I was easily breathing through my nose and really was barely exerting myself. Bad girl! So I upped the pace until I was breathing a comfortable 2-2 (two footfalls on the inhale, two on the exhale). And man was I going fast! For me, that is. I was really surprised by how good it felt. As I said below, I've never timed myself ever, it's just been guesstimating. I didn't wear a watch last night either, but I think I did pretty close to a 5k, with a substantial hill thrown in, and I was at or just under 30 minutes. Sweet! Now all I have to do is be able to run at that pace for 4 hours!! Gee, nothing to it. :) But it does give me a lot of hope and encouragement. Heading down my street at the end of the run I felt great. We'll see how I feel after three days in a row. My previous schedule was every other day.
Total topic change: pumpkin spice lattes. I have a weird thing for PSLs, as I cleverly call them. They are full of empty sugar calories, and if you get one prepared the way I like it (double tall soy) it costs $4.20, which is just flipping wrong. But on a cold, brisk fall day, a well-prepared PSL is like…well, its like a little slice of heaven you can warm your hands around. But therein lies the rub – they must be well-prepared. If not, a PSL is the coffee equivalent of a two-day old 7-11 maple bar with some nutmeg on top. I've found that the Starbucks in this town vary wildly in the quality of PSLs they produce. The Starbucks on Third makes amazing PSLs, and it is a constant struggle to avoid the temptation when I walk by on the way to work. But this weekend I went to the Starbucks on west Burnside and…um…20th-ish, and the PSL was so bad that I DIDN'T EVEN DRINK THE WHOLE THING! Sacrilege! I felt terrible but I just couldn’t drink the damn thing it was so cloying. Anyway, it's turned me off of PSLs for awhile, which is probably a good thing.
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