Listening

My normal mode of training over the past 10 months has been about listening. Listening to my body and what it wants to do. I had two goals of extending the distance of my runs and staying injury free. Those were my only two parameters. For any given day I’d usually pick a distance or time for the day and then let my body choose the pace that felt comfortable. That seemed to be work pretty well.

I also hoped to improve my speed, but that was secondary. Nonetheless my speed was steadily improving from May through about November. Each month my average pace per mile would drop just a little, even on longer runs.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of winter since I’ve never run through a winter before. I had visions of longer and longer runs (and staying injury free) and a nice steady improvement of pace. But then November hit, winter moved in, and my body said ‘hold on here’. Instead of pushing on with my vision, I decided just to follow my body. Running was and is still enjoyable, and that’s the primary aim anyway. Weekday runs became a little shorter and slower, and weekend runs I kept around 1:45-2:00 with no concern about pace at all.

Still, I am somewhat disappointed that my pace has fallen off. I have no explanation other than cold and winter is a time to slow down, so I just go with that.

Then yesterday. In the past 5 days I’ve had 3 runs of almost 2 hours, 1 day off, and 1 short run. I figured my Thursday run was going to be a bit slower after all that, still I wanted to get out. The first mile and a half was the usual slow warmup. Then I started to get into a rhythm and was feeling pretty good – overall a bit tired, but strong. I was running the pace my  body wanted to run and enjoying it.

Then I looked at my Garmin. Huh? That’s a pretty good pace! Alright let’s just go with it. Another mile and look at the pace again – it’s faster! Another mile and again a bit faster. I was rather enjoying this.

In the end I ran 7.2 miles, and taking over the first mile, I did a 10K at my early summer race pace from last year! I was a bit dumbfounded and quite thrilled at the same time.

How did this happen? Maybe it was a fluke. Or maybe the proverbial LSD (long, slow distance) that I’ve been doing for the past 2 months was paying off. All I know is that I’ve been listening to my body and just had a great run for it.

I’m going to enjoy this one! And hope there’s more of that to come this spring and summer! And continue to listen to my body.