Sunday, January 15, 2017

Early Zen

When I woke on Friday, for the third time this week my first thought was "at least it's Friday". On the plus side I was right for a change; on the minus side, it was 5:30 in the morning, I'm not sure why Lola's school left so early for Dublin but one thing was clear from the start: it was my job to get up and drive her to school. Niamh just doesn't do 5:30 and since I used to get up at that hour dozens of times voluntarily just to go running I'm not in a strong negotiation position to argue otherwise.

Actually, the timing worked out pretty well in as much as it was just time to go for my usual 7 mile run when I got back home. The roads were clear of ice, which was another plus, so all in all I can't complain too much.

As a matter of fact I had a really nice run. For the first time since I started running again I averaged just below 8-minute miles. It might be an arbitrary number but I was happy nevertheless. Saturday was a little bit different. Unfortunately, nobody had told our dog that it was the weekend and she was up at the usual time of 6:30, looking for breakfast. After that there was no more sleep to be had.

In numbers, Saturday's run was very similar to the day before, even if the HR was a smidgen higher. But in actual fact the legs didn't feel anywhere near as sprightly and I was really surprised when I saw afterwards that I had run virtually the same pace as the day before.

Sunday was almost groundhog day, this time it was the cat that demanded early breakfast. I used to think that I might get a lie-in once in a while when the kids were past a certain age but then made the crucial mistake of not vetoing an ever increasing number of animals (not that I would have stood a chance anyway) and guess who's the only one feeding them early morning. Anyway, the subsequent run was very similar to Saturday as the legs didn't show much love but the pace was still very similar. One thing I noticed was that miles 3-6 basically passed while my consciousness was somewhere in cloud cuckoo land, Being able to completely tune out and reach a Zen state of mind is a very good sign. The rest will follow.
13 Jan
7 miles, 55:36, 7:56 pace, HR 151
14 Jan
7 miles, 55:37, 7:56 pace, HR 153
15 Jan
7 miles, 56:11, 8:01 pace, HR 153

1 comment:

  1. Zen master. Don't tune out if you ever have to round up cats!

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