Double-digits or how I learned to stop worrying and love the pain

I did­n’t mean to, but I picked up a new trick in my run today. I start­ed out think­ing I’d run maybe a nice easy three miles. After all, I had not made it out on the road since Bay To Break­ers last week­end. I ran the first mile in just over nine min­utes. That’s pret­ty fast for me, so I decid­ed to ease back but go a fourth mile. The sec­ond mile was 9:55 but I felt pret­ty good so I fig­ured I’d wait and see, but maybe do five today. I kept on run­ning like that, think­ing I’d go anoth­er three miles, until I hit eight laps around Urbano Dri­ve, and I real­ized that I was start­ing to hit the wall. I still fan­ta­sized about mak­ing it to eleven, but by the end of the ninth mile I was in enough pain that I should­n’t have gone for the tenth, but damn. To get that close and not push on to ten? So I slowed it down, took the tenth mile at about a 10:50 pace, and brought it home.

Total time for ten miles: 1:36:29.

One thing that kept me going was watch­ing my split times. Even though I thought I was slow­ing down and los­ing speed, all my times from mile three to mile eight were around 9:30. I kept on fig­ur­ing, if 9:30 feels this good, I should be able to do three more laps.

Anoth­er thing that kept me going was pure spite. There was this kid, he might have been twen­ty, and he was run­ning clock­wise on the inside of the track, while I was going coun­ter­clock­wise on the out­side. He was out­pac­ing me sig­nif­i­cant­ly, as I saw him a lit­tle more often than twice per lap. That would­n’t both­er me much; I know I’m not fast. He would­n’t acknowl­edge a friend­ly nod or make eye con­tact. I kept on see­ing him out­pace me like that with­out any acknowl­edge­ment that hel­lo, nice day, we’re run­ning on the same road, howdy neigh­bor or what­ev­er. So I was deter­mined not to let him run faster and longer than me.

OK, I’m toast. I need water. And lets see how long I’ll be able to swim.

PS 1125m in 44:17