A great place to run

I have a confession to make: I did not end up running my 8 mile OMP (that’s “ordinary mortal pace,” or basically a comfortably hard run) after work yesterday evening. I did, however, come very, very close to it. So close, in fact, that I had my Clif bar in hand and was almost changing into my running tights, but Zdenek (who, to his credit, was fully willing to do the run) reasoned that we’d be better off having dinner, getting to bed at a decent hour, recovering from our lingering hangover, and running the OMP Tuesday morning instead. We would then shift our workouts around slightly (choice b) to schedule our difficult tempo run (at 30 seconds per mile faster than the OMP) on Thursday. Ideally, this would still leave us rested enough to run 18 miles on Saturday.

So that is what we did. Except that we didn’t.

This morning’s run started off questionably. It took us almost a full hour to get out the door (due to delicious coffee and a few too many trips to the bathroom); once we did, I realized that my heart rate monitor had gone totally wonky and was reading 199. While I normally rely on my heart rate during training runs to ensure my effort is hard enough but never too hard, this morning I was forced to simply go by feel. And I felt great. So great, in fact, that by the time my monitor kicked in again about 1.5 miles later, I realized that my heart rate was in tempo, rather than OMP, territory. But I didn’t slow the pace. Climbing Cat Hill around mile four, Zdenek commented that we might as well be doing our tempo run today. I suggested slowing down, but he retorted, “Finish what you started.”

And finish we did. I ran a perfect tempo pace for a full eight miles (which is 2.5 miles more at tempo pace than required by my training plan), and my resulting heart rate was spot-on (if not lower than anticipated). It was an exceptionally good run for me. I felt fantastic completing it, and even better knowing that Thursday’s run will be a more relaxed effort. This made me think of an interesting interview with Kara Goucher that I recently read, in which she talks about following an unscripted training plan and running by feel (which is, apparently, the Kenyan way). If she feels good, she trains hard. If she’s having a rough day, she backs off. She aims for a certain number of miles each week and a few key workouts, but the rest is decided on the fly.

It took me a few miles today to get over the fact that I was supposed to be running an OMP but was instead hammering out a tempo. For the first loop, a small battle played out between my mind, which wanted to follow the script, and my body, which wanted to write its own rules. Thankfully, I let my body win, and I was rewarded with the most perfect eight miles. The best place to run is in my element.