Moving Right Along

I don't usually run on Mondays. There are a few reasons for this. First and probably foremost, I have trouble motivating myself on Mondays. And with the rest of the week stretching before me, it's easy to rationalize my ability to make that run up later in the week. Plus, I usually run long on Saturday or Sunday, so a rest day on Monday is not out of the question.

Yesterday would have been a perfect Monday to skip. All kinds of excuses presented themselves. I raced hard on Sunday and was pretty sore. It was raining, and that meant running on the dreaded treadmill. But if I can take just one thing away from Sunday's race it's that I could be training harder, faster, and longer. And while time is obviously a factor what with two children, two jobs, and a house to keep from being condemned (not to mention the whole moth situation--ugh!), little things, like not blowing off my Monday runs, ARE possible.

So I headed over to the gym on my lunch hour in the pouring rain and logged the first three miles of the week. I pushed my pace too, because I think I'm getting lazy with my short training runs. I'm running my three milers at the same pace I ran the half marathon. You don't need to be an expert to know that it doesn't make sense to be running that slow on a three miler when my 5K race pace is at least two minutes per mile faster.

In any case, I had a decent run yesterday and got the week started on the right foot. Today will be a rest day, and hopefully my friend K will be available to run tomorrow. I think the week will end up looking like this:

Wednesday (3 miles) [though if I don't run with K I might do 4 miles]
Thursday (4 miles)
Friday (5 miles)
Saturday (rest)
Sunday (5K)

That brings me pretty short on mileage for this week, but I'm not sure how I could get a long run in with a race planned for this Sunday.

I talked last Sunday's race over with people at the RW forums, and someone pointed out a positive. Basically, I'm not doing much speed training right now, and I'm not running hills at all. This is good news because it's not as if I'm doing ALL that much to improve my times. I'm maintaining the status quo in terms of mileage and still improving ever so slightly. So I suppose it's possible that some dedicated, quality speed and hill training could make a big difference. We'll see.