From scary to awesome

When I noticed my workout for Wednesday, it petrified the heck out of me.

3 x 3 mile repeats.

I may have muttered under my breath “I can’t do that”! NINE miles at threshold pace (6:55-6:40 pace).  The thought of it sounded daunting to me. Not to mention hard.

9 miles.

Good lord. What have I gotten myself into?! I knew that it was going to hurt, how could this not hurt? I talked myself out of doing them first thing in the morning. Silly me! Shouldn’t I have wanted to get them out of the way first thing? Dumb me had to sit around and think about the workout all day. All day I thought about how the workout was going to hurt, how I didn’t think I could do it, how much marathon training sucks and how I could be enjoying a peaceful night at home. I also thought about how guilty I would feel if I didn’t do the workout. I definitely don’t like to feel guilty, especially when I have so much invested into my training at this point (sigh). Why, oh why can’t I give myself more credit? I hate self doubting, yet I am guilty of it constantly. A pace of 6:55 should be easy for me (well not easy, but you know what I mean?) to maintain over 3 miles.  I seriously need to give myself more credit!

Half way through my work day I gave myself another pep talk and told myself YOU GOT THIS! On my lunch I logged into my garmin connect account and created a 3 mile loop that was a short drive from my office. My plan of attack was to do the repeats directly after work. No more excuses! I knew that even if I want home I would be prolonging the inevitable. 2012 is all about no excuses, making it count, and dreaming big.

My 3 mile loop

My workout, well it was

AWESOME!

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	21:29.5	11.5	7:05
1	08:40.0	1	8:40	Warm up
2	:45.9	0.1	7:50
3	06:51.7	1	6:52	#1
4	06:46.9	1	6:47
5	06:43.5	1	6:44
6	06:46.7	1	6:47	#2
7	06:44.3	1	6:44
8	06:44.9	1	6:45
9	06:42.8	1	6:43	#3
10	06:47.0	1	6:47
11	06:39.4	1	6:43
12	07:59.0	1	7:59	Cool down
13	03:11.6	0.4	7:56

My warm up felt pretty good. I liked where I parked because I had easy access to my car for my water bottle and if needed I could toss some of my clothing layers. It was sunny, but also chilly at 40 degrees when I started at 4:15.

The first 3 miles were the hardest. I think that the first set or mile in any workout is always the slowest for me. I had some crazy wind on High Drive (should have known) that made me second guess where I was running. The last .4 miles is all up hill, another great choice. I got back to my car and felt beat and couldn't imagine running that loop 2 more times.

The second set went much better. It felt like less effort for me. Perhaps I knew what to expect? The first time I glanced at my Garmin I was running a 6:46 pace so I told myself to slow down. I realized on this set that I had less than a 10K to run so I knew that I could do it.

The third set was a piece of cake, less than a 5K! I felt like it was my strongest and best set of three. I was also glad to be done so that I could go and get into my warm car- it was about 35 degrees when I finished and past 5:30 pm so it was starting to get dark.

It was dumb of me to get myself so worked up over this workout. I felt like I nailed it.

Each mile was within my target pace
These were the fastest mile sets I have completed on my new training plan
I ran this workout strong coming off a high mileage week for me

I need to learn how to trust in myself and give myself more credit. I can do these workouts, I just need to believe in myself!

Questions for you:

Have you ever been scared to do a workout?

Ever put a workout off until the last minute?

--Tasha