Fast

Today I was.
Fast, that is.
Yesterday I decided that today I'd be fast.
And that's pretty much all it took.
Deciding.
Amazing how that works.

I've said so many times, and firmly believe, that 90% of running is mental.  That old adage that goes, "If you think you can or think you can't, you're right" is so true.   The things that run through my mind when I run is endless.  I think about everything and nothing.  Kids, work, to-do's, song lyrics, the scenery, the smells, memories, frustrations, ambitions.

Sometimes all I can think about is putting one foot in front of the other, or just making it to the end of the street or to the next parked car or to the next driveway.  Then other times I find myself a mile away from the last time I remember thinking about the run and realize that I've successfully kept my mind focused on something else for the past 8-ish minutes.  I love those times.

Well, my next race is two weeks from Saturday and I just finished my longest training week on the schedule.  My Saturday long was 12 miles.  I ran the whole gamut of thought during that hour and 40 minutes.  Wondering why I was doing this (again), especially on such tired feet, wondering why this felt so much harder than last week's 11 or the week before's 10, wondering how I was going to run my half if I was struggling this bad at mile 7, thinking this was a piece of cake at mile 7.5 when I turned around at Power and realized that I'd been running uphill eastbound on McDowell for the past three miles, feeling like the strongest girl on the planet as I hit mile 9 and thinking I could run to Phoenix, wishing I had my inhaler at mile 11, and then feeling like a hero again when my Garmin beeped at 12, then a little disappointed as I realized my average wasn't nearly fast enough to be ready to beat my PR.  I was all over the map, but I did it.

Yesterday as I drove to work thinking about my early Monday morning run and the upcoming race, I started wondering whether I've trained hard enough - fast enough - to chalk up a PR on November 12th.  I wasn't so sure.  I'll have to run 13.1 miles faster than an 8:17/mile pace to beat it, and lately, I've been super comfortable running in "my comfort zone" around 8:30-8:40 pace for my training days, or even a little slower on the longs.  Not nearly fast enough.

So I talked to my friend, Robyn, at work, who recently joined our running world about a year ago.  She just ran her first half in Chicago on 9/11 and is doing the Women's Half on Nov 4th.  We talk about running a lot, and we started talking about our goals for our upcoming races.  I told her I wanted a new PR.  Of course - don't we always?  Truth be told, I have a hard time with the cliche phrase,  "I just want to finish. "  Hogwash.  Really, if we are super honest with ourselves, who just wants to finish?  If we've trained, we know we are going to finish.  Don't we want to finish strong?  Be our best?  Give it our all and leave nothing left in the reserves when we cross the finish line?

Maybe that's just me.  Maybe I'm just super internally driven.  And maybe a smidge competitive.  Just maybe :) But I don't think it's just me.  I think that for most of us, if we don't set a goal, or set one that's too easy to meet, that we're short changing ourselves.  Or maybe afraid of failure.  Who cares if you don't cross the finish line ahead of your target as long as you gave it 110%?  But set a goal and push.  Push.  Push.

So back to this morning.  I told Robyn that on my way to work, I decided I needed at least 3 FAST runs over the next couple of weeks so that I would be ready to push on race day.  I told her I had a five-miler today and that I was going to run sub-8:00 the whole time.  I haven't run sub-8:00 since April.  Sure, I could blame it on the heat - we supposedly lose 10% of our speed for every 10-15 degrees over prime running temps.  So maybe that had something to do with it.  Or maybe I've just gotten comfortable.  Probably a little of both.  So I pushed and I did it.

I was fast and it felt good.  Good to know that our will power can be strong when we decide ahead of time and tell ourselves we can do it.  Just like the little engine that could.