Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Testing the Waters

Emboldened by my performance in Sunday's Dexter-Ann Arbor Run, I decided to do this morning's run at a faster-than-usual pace. I wanted to see if the speed I unearthed the other day was a fluke or something I should be gently nurturing towards its full potential.

I set out at what I felt was a comfortable pace. I didn't peek at Garmin because I wanted to let my body guide itself and remain unfettered by digital constraints. I just let myself flow along the sidewalk (said flowing was greatly enhanced by my totally awesome new shoes). When I reached the end of my first mile and Garmin chirped, I looked and saw I had done it in 7:55. I continued on. Second mile: 7:41. Third mile: also 7:41. I did a full 5K and finished in 24:02 (7:45/mile avg).

Well, well, well. I was very heartened by this outcome. I am going to make an effort to run faster all the time. It felt really good to go fast. Even better, I was home in 24 minutes instead of 30 which allowed me some extra kitty-rumpling time.

In other news, my weekly farm shares have begun coming in, and I am eating so many leafy vegetables there is a distinct possibility I may turn green. Yesterday's dinner featured three vegetable side dishes (in John's case, only two, since he continues to classify the taste of asparagus as "ass") plus vegetables between the multigrain buns used for the meatloaf sandwiches I made. I picked up a further four bundles of spinach in my share box yesterday, plus a bundle of broccoli raab (rapini) which I am going to use in the pasta I plan on making for dinner tonight. Additionally, I got another bundle of radishes, 2 heads of lettuce, some green onions, garlic scapes, and fresh thyme.

All of this vegetable-eating has been marvelously effective at promoting weight loss (huh! who knew!) and I am back down to 155 lbs as of this morning. After the half marathon I shot up to 163 lbs, about which I was not happy. Progress is now being made in the right direction. The dream of 75 (total weight loss) is still alive.

3 comments:

Fritz said...

When I started to be able to run fast, it was like a shiny new toy that I just couldn't stop playing with. Can lead to injuries, though...

chia said...

Great run! More people should follow your lead and eat more locally grown goodness :-). It's good for you and even better for the environment!

Anonymous said...

I'll never forget when I was sharing my times with one of my coaches a while back, and she said, "Well, maybe you're not running fast enough." A radical idea! Certainly not right for every workout, (we al lneed to recover & rest), but definitely worth doing a couple times a week.