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.

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.