Friday, August 19, 2011

When Your Best Just Isn't Good Enough

For the past 11 Tuesdays I have ran at Summer Speed Sessions. I have been up before 5:30 AM each of these Tuesdays except for the one morning where it was, no joke, one of the loudest storms I have ever heard and decided it would be safer to run in 90+ degree heat later in the evening than deal with lightning and thunder. I have been at the track before 6 AM to get my warm up. I haven't done the dynamic drills though...a bootcamp teacher that I didn't quite see eye to eye with loved dynamic workouts a little too much, thus making me hate them. I have completed all of the workouts to the best of my ability. My one goal for Summer Speed Sessions was to finish a mile under 7 minutes. Anything under 6:59 was fine by me. And I did that on my very first mile. Barely. Halfway through we tested our progress. And I improved,  improved in the sweltering heat no less. 

On Tuesday we ran another timed mile. I gave it my best and my best wasn't good enough. Not only did I do worse than my second time trial, I did worse than my first time trial. It took me 7:02 to run a mile. I was incredibly disappointed with this time, however there are a few things to take into consideration. I almost hate to mention them because I feel like I am making excuses.

  • I ate more this past weekend than I probably ate the entire month of July. Probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I ate a lot. 
  • I also drank a lot. You know those buckets of margaritas? I pretty much polished one off my myself over the course of 2 nights in addition to beer...
  • And probably the biggest thing, I fell while playing in the river on Sunday evening. In the picture below in the left hand corner a little lower than center, see that rock formation that is perfectly scooped out with two larger flat parts on each side? I fell right in the middle of that hitting my tailbone hard. It was one of those falls that completely knocked everything out of me. I sat there for a few minutes stunned at what just happened. Then I rolled over and almost wanted to throw up it hurt so bad. So this was still hurting on Tuesday.
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Even with all of the variables that came into play for my mile on Tuesday, I wanted to do better. I tried to do better and I just couldn't. I looked down at my watch as I crossed the finish line and was bummed. When people asked how I did, it wasn't too hard to tell them I didn't do as well as I wanted to and that technically I got slower. 

Would I change anything? If I could, the only thing I would change would be the fall. Everything else about the weekend was great. Time spent laughing and exploring with great friends. I ate amazing food. I went whitewater rafting. I hike 4 pretty awesome trails and even saw some waterfalls AND a black bear. To improve my mile by X amount wouldn't have been worth it if I had to give up everything I did last weekend. I need to realize that running fast isn't the most important thing, it's that I was simply out there running.

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