WTF?

I have been running at least one mile every day of this week. It is one of my discipline activities.

It has been a while since I have been running consistently, so I wasn’t sure what type of pace I would be able to push. I started to time myself a few days ago so that I can start to benchmark my runs. As I have said before, “Only what is measured can be improved.“

My first time was disappointing – 11:35. Really? I can’t remember ever running that slow before. Perhaps I just need to break myself in to pick up my pace.

The next day I decided I was going to push more. I picked up my stride, quickened my foot steps, and focused on my  breathing – only to turn out a time of 11:05.

WTF? Unless I am going crazy, how is this possible? It is hard to describe why, but I know what type of pace I run. I can see by my foot steps that I should have at least a 9 minute pace. How can I be running so slow.

Then yesterday, I stepped up the pace. I passed several people who were running as well by my neighborhood, so I had a good feeling that this would be a good time. 10:43 is not what I had in mind.

No way. Something has to be wrong. Then it occurred to me to double check the course length. It is 1.4 miles. LOL! Turns out that my pace was 7:39, which is good for me at this stage.

So what did I learn?

I worked much harder feeling that I was very slow. If I would have seen that I was running an 8:30 pace, I wouldn’t have been pushing as hard.  I KNEW I can run faster than a 11min pace. I felt like I was going crazy looking at the watch. If I could ingrain that same type of belief into everything I want to accomplish – my work ethic would go through the roof.