GETTING THERE

Frequent commentor, Double, always says he knows he’s rounding into shape when he can run a 20 miler at the drop of a hat. I’ve always countered that I know I’m getting fit when I can get through Pfitz’s medium-long runs in the middle of the week without even thinking about them. On the whole, there's probably not much difference in those two statements. While I’m not quite to the point of either of them, I’m getting there.

A week or two ago I mentioned that every hill during a medium-long run felt like a struggle. Today I spent 1:55 in Hyland Park and only half of the hills felt like a struggle. Maybe even less than half because it felt like I was cruising pretty good today. I often feel guilty for running my recovery days at 9:00 pace – I can’t think of any other runners that run 2:00 per mile slower than their marathon pace on their recovery days – but if it makes me run better during my tempos and medium-long runs, I’ll take it.

Looking at Pfitz’s plan as a whole – it seems amazingly simple. I’ve only done 2 tempo runs so far, but there are only 2 more on the plan. Then I’ll throw in 4-5 interval workouts, along with a couple of races and 1-2 MP workouts. It continues with the medium-long and long runs and that’s it – it’ll be June 20th before I know it.

I spent most of last Saturday’s long run with Jared. He’s the guy with quotes like, “I’m hurting pretty good, but I think I can hurt a lot more.” Well Saturday’s run provided a glimpse into where Jared gets this philosophy. Jared shared his father’s advice the first time he went out for organized football. It’s today’s QOD.

Quote of the Day;

“Never let them see that you’re injured and never let them know that you’re tired.” – Jared’s dad