MCM Training

I would rate this training cycle as meh. I had a lot of trouble adjusting to summer humidity, found myself cutting some runs short, having trouble keeping up, and being intimidated by the hills around me. So I read a few articles on motivation, tried to step back and think about what's happening around me, and set about resetting my training.

The week I spent in New York with Ed's family was fantastic, from a running perspective. I got up and out the door every day I was supposed to run, had a really successful long run, and Ed even joined me twice - and in a week of solo running, that was really appreciated.

Shortly after getting home from New York, we took off on a 17 day European adventure (first and last days were mostly travel) and I would say I kept up with running, for the most part. I ultimately logged 130 miles in August and that's just under what I had hoped for.

Once I returned to DC, I knew it was time to put my business hat on and get to work. I hit my training plan like it owned me.

Sunday - mostly solo 10 miler; company for the last 2 (I'm almost embarrassed. to admit that I found myself highly motivated to keep going so I could hatch eggs from Connor's Pokemon Go game - Connor would not be embarrassed that he was motivated to run two miles with me just so he could hit Pokestops and battle Pokemon in gyms).

Monday - 4 miles; Tuesday - 9 miles; Wednesday - 3 miles; Thursday - TRACK!; but this morning? It was the run that gave me the confidence to keep going. I met a friend before the crack of dawn, drove to her house (1.5 miles away) and we set out through her hilly streets. We actually got pretty close to my home at one point, and I desperately wanted to run down the hill and skip the second half of our run, but I didn't want to have to deal with getting my car later in the day - so up the hill I went as we proceeded onward.

And then it happened. We started talking about kids and school, and she is such an amazing mom of four kids and has a vast knowledge of education (she teaches) and at some point, she said "we're getting close to my house - what are we at?" and I fully expected to see I had run 8 miles but no - we were at 8.97, so with a goal of 9 for the morning - we were sitting on finished! The time went so fast, I had so much fun, and my head is clear and ready to finish this training cycle up.

Tomorrow I have 19 planned, and I'll be running it solo. Hopefully the hurricane predicted to be where I'm staying won't get there, though Ed warns it might be a pretty windy run. Regardless of conditions, the run will also be important.

But today? I feel like I found some mojo and wanted to record it because the run was that much fun.

Elaine