Tonight was the hardest day of the 12 or so Learn to Run days that I have so far attended. The weather was miserable and it would have been very easy to stay home if it weren't for the group. (See yesterday's post on guilt.) I know for sure that had I been training on my own, I would not have run in those weather conditions and if I had, I would have found an excuse to quit early.
Tonight was a big jump. We have made gradual increases in the amount of running from one minute to two minutes to three minutes but always with two minutes of walking in between. Tonight having only a one minute recovery period was extremely challenging.
But the weather was the main problem . After spending three hours in the cold at the rally for teachers, I made sure I was dressed warmly. I don't have any of the fancy running gear, so I had on a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a hoody, and a jacket plus two pairs of sweat pants. As each layer got soaked, the extra weight made running even more difficult.
On top of that, the weather forced me to run bent over to avoid the wind and the piercing rain that stabbed my face. When bent over, I found it harder to take in enough air to make running comfortable. When walking I found it helpful to walk as upright as possible and to take deep breaths, something I couldn't do while running.
And one other weird thing I noticed about the challenges of the day. I am not all that competitive and I am certainly not competing with anybody at Learn to Run but if I am gaining on someone, I visualize passing them. When I hear footsteps behind me, I have to force myself not to speed up and upset my pacing. Tonight was totally different. Being more tired than usual, when I was gaining on someone, I figured, "Hey, I must be going fast enough, maybe even too fast", so I would slow down to conserve energy.
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