Not every run can be a good one...

After Saturday's highly successful 4 miler, I thought for sure I was in for some great weekday runs this week. I headed off to the gym first thing Monday morning and swam a (fairly) quick 750m (I wasn't even the slowest person in the pool). But things came crashing down on Tuesday morning. Due to some after work obligations, and not wanting to leave poor Ini in the crate too long, I decided not to run before work on Tuesday in lieu of doing the run Tuesday after work instead. (As a side note, "crate" sounds like an awful word, doesn't it? Like we force him into a tiny shipping container with mere slits for him to see through? I assure you, he loves the kennel - just not for 15 hours a day - and we do not abuse our dog.) This was a bad idea for a few reasons:

1. Things stink in the afternoon. There are more cars on the road, so instead of inhaling nice fresh morning air, I inhaled the toxins coming out of every SUV on the roads. And at 6PM, there were SUVs aplenty.
2. The roads near my office building (the same stench-free roads where I did my weekday runs last week) are in the process of being repaved. So, in addition to the car exhaust, there was the lingering scent of freshly poured (is pour the right verb for asphalt?) asphalt. It stinks to high heaven, if you've never had the pleasure.
3. It is HOT in the afternoon. Now, granted, Tuesday's run at 6PM was nowhere near the hellish experience I had on my first long run, sweating it out at 11AM-noon, but still... I was doing some serious sweating.
4. I don't feel comfortable running with all my colleagues watching me. I realize this is a bit silly, but folks at work know me as the person who is organized, the person who can get things done, the person who keeps her desk insanely neat... I prefer to keep it that way, rather than have them start to recognize me as the person who shuffles more than she runs or the person who sweats like a pig. At 6PM, there are more of my colleagues on the road than I'd rather run past.

You get the point: Running works better for me if I just bite the bullet and get my lazy butt out of bed early to do it before work.

All that said, Tuesday's run was pretty fantastic. During the first mile, I kept noticing my pace and I knew that there was no way to keep it up (sounds vaguely like that PR I had in the HM relay earlier this year, no?), but it just felt so good to be running at that pace. It really felt right. Like that was the pace I was designed for (and we all know I'm not built for speed, per se). So, I kept it up and my first mile came in at slightly more than 12m/m. It felt good, so I kept going and mile 2 came in at about 12:30m/m. At this point, I had to turn into the sun and the blistering heat of the day was cooking my forehead as I ran uphill (both ways!). Eventually, around 2.3 miles, I had to stop and walk for a teensy bit, but I finished running and I felt really proud of myself.

Of course, with a run like that, you can imagine what today held. That's right folks, a blustery, miserable vomit-inducing death march that lasted a mere 2miles, during which I walked at least 3 times. It was miserable. It was one of those runs where you're asking yourself the entire time "Why the heck am I doing this? I could still be sleeping. Running is the devil!"

I don't know. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe my attitude was all wrong before I headed out. I often think my head gets in the way of my running, and this might just be one of those times. Oh well, they can't all be fabulous runs, can they?

In other news, a friend of mine at work pointed out this fantastic feature offered by Garmin. I'm sure most of you've already heard about it, but it's wicked cool and I thought I would provide a link, just in case you're behind the curve like me. It's called Garmin Connect, and it's similar to the Training Center software that comes with your Garmin device, except that it's way cooler (partially due to the implementation of Google maps), and it's web-based, so that you can share your running successes (er, in this case huge embarrassing failures) with your friends. If you haven't already, I encourage you all to check it out.

Not all of my runs are terrible. As an example from my own Garmin Connect account, I share with you the previously raved about PR from the HM relay in April. I'm still hiding today's huge embarrassment.