Take It Easy

Today’s Run

Time – 43:32
Distance – 4.4 miles
Pace – 9:47 min/mi
Elevation – 143 ft.

My leg felt much better, but I didn’t want to take too many chances with it, so I went out easy and planned to only do a short loop that’s about 4.4 miles. I did the first set of hills with no problem, but I felt a tightness on the second, bigger hills, so I walked up and then ran the last mile in. Nothing too spectacular. Just waiting around for the long run on Sunday and Baby Girl on Tuesday.

Part of this is knowing when to slow down

So much of running is knowing what days to not run, or to not run hard, or to change paces. I’m not very good at it, I will admit. The last time I did a lot of running (about 10 years ago), I had a few injuries because of my overzealous nature and my unwillingness to understand that NOT WORKING OUT isn’t the same as weakness/lack of desire/etc. I’ve had to spend a lot of time thinking about the running in a different way.

I picked up a metaphor the other day that I thought was great. Running is a book, and every day that you do something towards your running (including REST), you are adding a page to your book. On that page is the “Why” of what you were doing. The goal is to build the thickest and most meaningful book you can. The thicker the book, the stronger your running is. The more you understand about WHY you are running everyday, the more you will know about your running.

Jack Daniels says in his seminal work Daniels’ Running Formula that a runner should always be asking the question, “What is the purpose of this workout?” Even more important, though, as Daniels goes on, is the ability to answer the question!

If you don’t know the why, then that page in your book of running is meaningless, and might as well be ripped out. Your personal running book will be thick, but will have no information that is useful to you. The “Why” of running matters.