I have been silent on my running posts for six days now. I haven’t run in that time, though that is not the sole reason for not posting. The last run took the wind out of my sails. More so than I initially thought. I was tired by the time that I finished my last run because of the increased run times that the Watch To 5K had me doing at the Week 4 stage - at least I assumed that that was the reason. However, though those run times played a part I now don’t see them as the sole reason.
My mind was in comparison mode, comparing my current run’s distance and time with how well I had done on the previous run. In essence I had been competing with myself and telling myself that if I ran further and/or faster, both was a real bonus, I was doing better.
I was essentially in race mode. Racing with myself, though I did not see this. I need someone else to point out to me that this way of running was simply not sustainable. Rex Barrett kindly reached out to me on Mastodon giving me some perspective. He pointed out that the pace that I was running for my training runs, was a race pace. I needed to slow down and set myself more realistic paces for the training runs, along with the time that I spend running.
Something else that I am forgetting is my age. I turned sixty last September. I’m in pretty good shape, but whether I like it or not, I’m not where I was forty years ago. I am older, the body is slower, it needs more time to recover. I need to recognize this and proceed with my training accordingly.
I hope to get back to running today or tomorrow, before I loose the momentum. I don’t think that I will, I want to see myself running a 5K whatever the speed, but the mind can be tricky and as I said at the start of this post, that last run took the wind out of my sails.