Mental Monday!

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 · Mike Davis

Monday, February 13, 2012

Just another manic Monday! Bengals, sometime in the 80s.

The day kind of got away from me and my boss sat in my office at 3:30 and around 4:00 I told him I really needed to go run. He was quite apologetic, but hay he’s my boss and he’s really good about allowing me to do my thing. For whatever reason my head and heart weren’t really into the idea of running, but those are days I have to just lace’em up and move my feet. I was on my own so no partner to help motivate me. Just me and the wind! I got about 100 feet and realized I left my ID card in our locker room, so I stopped, turned off my Garmin and went back to get it. Not helpful! Got my ID (required to get back on base), and headed out for some distance yet decided.

The wind was strong and I was slow in getting my mind and heart into this act of running. Mile one came kind of quicker than I expected and instead of fretting over how slow or fast I was going I just ran without paying much attention to my Garmin. Mile 2 was even quicker and I decided today would be a semi tempo run. I took in the surroundings and began to settle into a steady 8:12 pace. I haven’t looked at my exact numbers, but I would bet that I stayed in the 8:12 range from mile 2 through 7. I got to our normal turnaround point for 7 miles and decided I was going to run a bit further. I turned around at the 3.75 mile point which is also as far as you can go in that direction. I thought I would be running with the wind on the way back, but sure enough around mile 5, I felt like I was running into it! No problem, knew I had momentum on my side.

Finished up running 7.5 miles in a reasonably fast time, in fact my wife even said; “You’re back fast”. Like she was thinking I didn’t run my normal distance. I will force myself to take tomorrow slow and easy and give my body a chance to recover. Despite my mental mind set, it turned out to be a very good run. Got some good yoga stretches in after and then off to my in-laws for dinner. Now I have to do some foam rolling and enjoy the rest of my evening. Hope yours is a good one!

Be well!

mike