Sunday thoughts

Today I ran a 10 km road race for the first time in 15 months. I'd only ever participated in two other 10 km road races, the one I did my previous personal best in and the same race I was in today, and that was two years ago.

Previous personal best: 56:43
Two years ago in this same race: 57:04
Today: 43:11 (edit: race results list my time as 43:14)

13:32 faster than my previous best. Granted, I haven't made any attempt at beating my best in a timed event since then. I've run a lot since then, so it's pretty interesting to see that time. I mean I knew I would get around that, and in the summer I was regularly doing easy paced 45 min ten k runs. I might do another ten k before the longer races start up in the summer, maybe then I can have a race where I wasn't sick for a couple days the week before, and spent 12 hours driving the day before the race. I was pretty exhausted today, didn't feel like I was able to dig down to get all that I could have gave. But, still I'm pretty darn stoked to see hard numbers showing that I'm in much better shape than I was in 2007-2009.

I ran a 5:23 mile on the treadmill while running at the school gym the other day. It almosy feels like a lie to say that though, because it's the treadmill. I feel like I could go so much faster in a 1 mile distance on the treadmill, but it takes at least 30 seconds to get the machine up to 10 miles an hour. Let alone a pace I want to run at when I'm trying to push the limit. Just for no particular reason I want to see if I can get my treadmill one mile time down to 5:00. Then when the snow and ice finally melts I'll hit the track at the Apple Bowl and see if I can do a sub 6:00 mile outside.

Random thought...

Often when I talk to people after races they seem so dejected about their result, no matter how awesome it was. It often feels like people aren't able to appreciate their results in a race, or even in life in general, unless they achieve their main target goal. This is such a sad thing. My only guess is by fixating on one specific goal they lose sight of all other possible good achievements they could be creating.