If I looked the way I feel, I'd be a giant bruise. All blue. Well, today I'd be a yellowing bruise because I feel like I'm healing. Oh, I know, sexy. So sexy, it's zexzy.
I was looking over my training logs, and I saw that 8:08 min/mi pace, moderate effort 4 mile run a week before the race. Yeah, I ran the half at an 8:07 pace. I raced my heart out, and I'm sore like someone took a lot of anger out on me. I'm afraid of the photos they took of me during the race. I lost all shame. I was making faces, gritting my teeth... and, something you can't take a photo of, breathing like a true asthmatic (because I am one, haha!). THAT's how hard and hilly the race was.
Oh, what is it you are saying? Enough bragging?
No matter the number of self-pats on the back I give myself, I'm still alone?
Ouch. ***wild laughter from the audience***
Okay, okay. I do want to write about something that could mean some food for thought. Awhile back I wrote about how I started training in the mornings. A lot of people have their preferences. I'm one of
those who'd rather work out at night. Yet, I found working out in the morning very refreshing. My morning routine fell apart, however, when I got my injury, and there was just no point to wake up at 5-6 am to twirl my thumbs. So, I stepped aside, looked at my morning running experience from a distance, and began to see a connection between running at night and injury prevention.
First of all,
at night you run on warmed up limbs after a day of activities (er, work, that is). In the early morning, though, you need a lot more time to get rid of stiffness and to take more caution if you have to run hard than if you ran at night (plus, it's dark 90% of the year, so you can trip and fall and break your neck and die).
Secondly,
after your night run, you immediately go into recovery mode because you are done with the day. No need to go to work, no need to walk, no need to lift things, no real need to move. Just sit on your butt for an hour or so, enjoy your dinner, work on your correspondence, make some prank calls, and then go to bed. If you ran in the morning, you'd have to wait for your workday to be over before you could start your recovery, and that's just, for lack of a better word, uncool.
I, honestly, didn't think of these two things when I switched to morning running. I was infatuated with the time management aspect of it, which is really just an illusion. You wake up super early, yet you still need to sleep the right number of hours, so you've got to go to bed early. But it was nice to accomplish something "big" in just one hour before I
really started my day.
This is just some food for thought. In the end, we all do what works best for us, and very often we don't have the luxury of chosing when to run. We just run. And that's just beautiful.
PS. Running at night should not be confused with running in the dark. That'd be about the dumbest advice out there. By night, I really mean, in the late afternoon while it's light out.
I was looking over my training logs, and I saw that 8:08 min/mi pace, moderate effort 4 mile run a week before the race. Yeah, I ran the half at an 8:07 pace. I raced my heart out, and I'm sore like someone took a lot of anger out on me. I'm afraid of the photos they took of me during the race. I lost all shame. I was making faces, gritting my teeth... and, something you can't take a photo of, breathing like a true asthmatic (because I am one, haha!). THAT's how hard and hilly the race was.
Oh, what is it you are saying? Enough bragging?
No matter the number of self-pats on the back I give myself, I'm still alone?
Ouch.
***wild laughter from the audience***
Okay, okay. I do want to write about something that could mean some food for thought. Awhile back I wrote about how I started training in the mornings. A lot of people have their preferences. I'm one of those who'd rather work out at night. Yet, I found working out in the morning very refreshing. My morning routine fell apart, however, when I got my injury, and there was just no point to wake up at 5-6 am to twirl my thumbs. So, I stepped aside, looked at my morning running experience from a distance, and began to see a connection between running at night and injury prevention.
First of all, at night you run on warmed up limbs after a day of activities (er, work, that is). In the early morning, though, you need a lot more time to get rid of stiffness and to take more caution if you have to run hard than if you ran at night (plus, it's dark 90% of the year, so you can trip and fall and break your neck and die).
Secondly, after your night run, you immediately go into recovery mode because you are done with the day. No need to go to work, no need to walk, no need to lift things, no real need to move. Just sit on your butt for an hour or so, enjoy your dinner, work on your correspondence, make some prank calls, and then go to bed. If you ran in the morning, you'd have to wait for your workday to be over before you could start your recovery, and that's just, for lack of a better word, uncool.
I, honestly, didn't think of these two things when I switched to morning running. I was infatuated with the time management aspect of it, which is really just an illusion. You wake up super early, yet you still need to sleep the right number of hours, so you've got to go to bed early. But it was nice to accomplish something "big" in just one hour before I really started my day.
This is just some food for thought. In the end, we all do what works best for us, and very often we don't have the luxury of chosing when to run. We just run. And that's just beautiful.
PS. Running at night should not be confused with running in the dark. That'd be about the dumbest advice out there. By night, I really mean, in the late afternoon while it's light out.