A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

The upside of sludge season is those unexpected nice days—the ones that start with a 60 percent chance of rain and gloomy clouds that linger too long, but ends with sunny skies and springy breezes. For once, one of these days happened on the first day of spring.

So, you can imagine that my motivation was greater than the “take a nap” level I mentioned on Tuesday. Around 4:45 p.m., I jumped into my running gear and made my stealthy way out the door and parked at the rec. center. I tied my car door key to my shoe with much anxiety and took off to the hills of Kent again.

Recently, I have felt the urge to start improving my running times again. When I first started running, I paid too much attention to running times and too little to distance. But now I’m building my distance and would like to start picking things up a bit. I know that I am capable of running much faster than my 9-minute/mile pace from St. Malachi, but I just need to do it!

Sometimes, however, this Nike+iPod thing just doesn’t work well for me. I know the first two mile-markers on my path, so I not only get my stats (duration, distance, pace) readout from my iPod, I can also calculate it myself. My run started with 6:35 mile, then 6:50 for the second. But when I checked my iPod in the middle of my third mile, it told me that I was running at a pace of 28:35/mile. No, I didn’t lie down and die; apparently my shoe and my iPod weren’t on the same page. Either that or I had actually started running in place. I felt like I was moving.

Anyhow, I just ignored the errant technology and stuck to my goal of running for 45 minutes. It was such a nice day I could have run for a couple of hours, but I had my 6:15 p.m. class to shower and stop sweating for. But I will have to build up my “short” days in the same way I need to work on lengthening my “long” running days.

It hadn’t occurred to me until recently that my running workouts could range from long to short days. I just thought I was lazy on the days when I ran shorter workouts (whether it was because of time or energy). But I have had a number of people explain to me the dynamics of the long and short running days, and I feel my running confidence building. This realization has also reinforced the fact that training for running and swimming (at least in my head) are two wholly different things. And that’s my excuse for not being very good at the running one!

This weekend I would like to get a general sense of how I should structure my running schedule in preparation for the half-marathon in May. Next week is spring break at Kent State and, while I still have to work, I won’t have to give up my lunches on Monday and Wednesday for class. That’s two extra training periods at my disposal! And I’m looking forward to taking advantage of them. My fingers are crossed, however, for some good weather (knock on wood and all that jazz).