Retraining my brain and my legs: a lesson in patience

This week marks my first real week of training – last week was a bit of a dud due to the cold and that I didn’t have the training manual yet. I’ve completed three runs this week: two tempo runs of 2 and 3 miles respectively (3km and 5km), and one 2.5 mile steady run, as directed by my Running Room (RR) training manual. These runs were completed at a particular speed and heart rate maximum, again according to RR book. And I have to say I kinda struggled mentally.

Prior to commencing this training, my runs consisted of a minimum of 8km and upwards of 10, 12, 15km. So these 2 and 3 mile runs were insanely short to me. At the end of these runs, it felt very strange to step off the treadmill and not feel spent or pushed to my limits or soaked in sweat. I had to consciously reign myself in to stick within a particular speed despite the desire to go faster or farther.

In some ways, I almost feel relieved that I’m not pushing myself as hard as I did before, and in other ways, I’m really freaking out because I worry that I might be losing endurance or lung capacity or that I might become too used to doing such short runs that I become a lazy runner (by my definition), and not to mention that I actually like pushing myself and being “in the zone” and feeding off the adrenaline high! And our long runs on Sundays are at a much slower pace, which I struggled with last week because my legs wanted to burst ahead and my lungs wanted to feel the burn.

Perhaps another way of looking at this new method is that I’m running shorter distances more often during the week; whereas before I was running longer distances less often per week. So perhaps I’m actually covering the same, if not more, mileage as I was before, and it’s just spread out a bit differently.

The RR philosophy described in the book is sensible – take it slow, avoid injury. I will embrace that philosophy, believe in it and trust it. I will work on readjusting my training patterns because now I’m training with a particular goal in mind – before I was just running for the sheer “pleasure” of it and running for however long I felt like it that particular day.

In re-reading these paragraphs, I worry I come off sounding – I can’t place the correct word at the moment – like a jerk or something. Running is not easy, and I don’t want to down play the efforts that go into running any distance, short or long. I think it’s more my own attitude; I mean, as a Taurus, I’m impatient and want to achieve a particular goal/result/etc now! I just have to slow down the pace, adjust my perspective, and look forward to that adrenaline high on May 27th when I cross the finish line!

Said the tortoise to the hare, “slow and steady wins the race.”