Blaine's Running Journal

Distance: 0.09km Time: 0:01 Pace: 6’31” kCal: 7 Heart: 117/123 RPE: 5 Type: 343-10

Yesterday I went out for my long run. It’s been a while since I considered my weekend run a long run with everything that’s been going on. But things worked out in the sense that, my friend said she couldn’t make it and my wife decided that a warm comfortable bed is better than hitting the pavement at 5am amongst heavy crashing waves, blowing sand, and surfer dudes down by the beach.

So off I went all excited and determined to just do a nice slow-n-easy pace to get my time in. For once I decided that the miles were not important but, rather, the amount of time I put in. My goal was 90 minutes or more. That way, I’d pass into the ‘I’m bored’ part of my running and work on my cognitive perceptions, iron will, lotus of focus, and all those other things that you read about for marathon training.

Translation:
Get out there and do it. Don’t complain, don’t whine, just have a good time!

So off I went and did my first 30 – 40 minutes like any other training run.
Then the boredom started to settle in…

• I focused on my breathing. Okay, I’m bored.
• I focused on my upper body, trying to relax and move my energy to my legs. Okay. I’m bored.
• I started to envision myself as David Carradine (aka grasshopper) in Kung Fu, running on rice paper and not making a mark. Okay, too dorky and impossible.  So I focused on my feet hitting lightly between the pavement and wind-blown sand, so as not to make a sound. Okay, I’m bored.
• Then 15 young and fit 18-21 year olds boys whipped by me with their tops off in 65°F weather on their morning training run. Yup, this would have gotten my wife and friend out there. So I pictured myself running with that group for about 5 minutes. Then I got bored!

Yet, to my surprise… after doing all these games back and forth, I realized that more than 90 minutes had already passed.

Whoo-Hoo! That’s great!

At that point I was even more excited because I knew I was done.
So the next goal was to simply turn around and run back to the local coffee shop for my banana (I deserved it!).

How far did I go? I really don’t know. I need to check on the map because the Nano said I ran for 1 minute with a distance of 0.09km and 7 calories. So you got the picture. I am a little pissed off about this as I wanted to see my splits and heart rate, but at least I know what I did. I guess I’ll just have to wait until next weekend to see how far I go… or until I get bored.