I recently had a pr. The next day, I wondered how my new time would change my times in the McMillan Calculator.
When I plugged in the numbers, and my new paces spit out at me, my first reaction was “That’s fast. I can’t do that.”
Immediately, I found myself making excuses about whether or not I’d be able to hit that time for the half marathon. It was the back and forth battle: “Well, it is 6 months away” or “holding that pace for 5 miles is one thing but a half marathon, that’s gonna hurt.”
This morning, I had a 5 mile pace run. Of course, I told myself “Just do the pace from the race last week. Don’t worry about the McMillan pace. Afterall you have 11 miles tomorrow.”
When I stepped out the door, I stopped analyzing and I just ran. No thoughts. I decided to let my body take over. It knew my goal. It knew how fast it could run.
The morning was cold and misty, and I ran. I wasn’t going to check my garmin. I was going to run my pace run. At 1 mile, I checked it. I was right on pace.
“That’s because you’re running downhill” I responded, “I’m sure to slow down.”
When I started the first difficult hill, I flew up the hill almost effortlessly.
If it were up to me, I would have stopped running to figure out how that just happened. But my legs just kept running.
“That was the easy hill. Wait until you get to the next one.”
At the next hill, I climbed (again) like I had wings on my back.
At the third hill and the steepest and longest, I said, “I’m going to hold this pace as long as I can. I’m not going to slowdown.”
The third hill is a mile long, and I did slow down. :20 seconds for that mile.
When I finished, my average pace was off by exactly the :20 seconds that I lost going up the hill.
But that’s ok because what a confidence builder.
As I walked the last .5 miles home, I thought about the run. Mentally I doubted myself. As soon as I let that go and just do what I do, everything fell into place. I didn’t collapse from exhaustion. I wasn’t sick from running hard. My body wasn’t cramping up. In fact at the end, I did a walk/run with Mike for another 1.27 miles…..clearly, the run didn’t kill me.
It was just scary at first.
I had to get used to the idea of “being fast”.
Welcome to my “new” normal.
