Beneath the Bay Bridge

Fatigue is a fun­ny thing. Some­times it’s hard to tell when I am actu­al­ly fatigued and when I sim­ply think I ought to be fatigued. Cer­tain­ly when I got to the top of Potrero Hill with­out stop­ping I was breath­ing hard and hap­py to start back down­hill even after only a half mile, but I did­n’t con­sid­er stop­ping. Even as soon as a mile lat­er there was some­thing in me telling me to stop. I played the usu­al tricks on myself: telling myself I’d take a walk break at two miles, then at three and at four miles. 

At no time was I on the verge of col­lapse, though. Mak­ing those deals with myself to stop soon but not now was real­ly a nego­ti­a­tion. I was say­ing I would­n’t con­sid­er stop­ping until after the next mile­stone, but that I would see how it was then. The thing is, I did­n’t real­ly ever feel like I could­n’t go any far­ther. I stopped at six miles so that I could take the last three or four blocks until I got home as a cooldown period.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s good not to have to stop, but I am begin­ning to won­der whether I’m push­ing myself hard enough. I sup­pose that’s not real­ly the issue. I’m putting in the miles right now to accli­ma­tize my body to mov­ing. A coach of mine told me once when he start­ed me run­ning out­doors for the first time, to do the dis­tance and let the speed come up nat­u­ral­ly. I’m see­ing that hap­pen now so I can’t argue it. A month ago I was run­ning an aver­age of four­teen min­utes per mile. With­out incor­po­rat­ing any sprints or speed work of any kind, four weeks lat­er I’m doing eleven and twelve minute miles.

Vari­ety is indeed impor­tant in a work­out rou­tine though, so I should start think­ing of chang­ing things up and bring­ing in some more intense short­er-dis­tance runs; maybe more bare­foot­ing in the grass. I don’t know what it will look like and I don’t know that it’s time yet to start doing any­thing oth­er than putting in miles, but it’s some­thing for me to start planning.