Monday 9/17

Last week my mood was low all week. I didn’t want to do the Tuesday tempo run. I almost didn’t. My typical Tuesday after work consists of a 14 minute warm up run from our Campus I fitness center to the nearby Mayfield HS track. Here is a map route www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=164424 When I got to the track, there was a middle school cross county meet in progress with the finish line on the track. My track session was CANCELED. I had limited time for my work out, but decided to spend a few minutes watching the kids run. It was a big meet and there were a lot of parents/grandparents. I knew NO ONE. Yet I used this time to enjoy watching the effort these kids put out. Almost all of them were really throwing themselves into the race. I was inspired to the point of encouraging some of the kids as they ran by – heck – I’ll admit it - I was yelling at the top of my lungs as though my kid was out there fighting off an opponent. With my mood improved, I jogged back to the fitness center, and en route I decided that I had at least 15 extra minutes. So I planned to do a 2m tempo on tread mill. I HATE tread mills. I was in the same funk on Thursday at lunch time when I had a 3x1200 interval scheduled. I just did not want to go. It took everything I had in me to get out of my work chair and go to the track. My first interval was dismal. Second a little better. I finally got into the groove with the last. And doing 4:20 was a huge boost to my mood. Yesterday I picked up new shoes from Vertical Runner. Buying new shoes always helps improve my mood. The next two weeks I will break them in, and then use them to complete Akron Marathon and Towpath Marathon. I have not yet registered for Towpath. I plan to do that this evening. My track sessions will be less intimidating the next two weeks, since I will be using them to set my marathon pace. I’d like to keep at least 7:30 for both races so I have my track pace set a little faster. I view these two marathon events as training/preparation for JFK 50.