Been feeling slow and fat lately, so I wanted a hard workout. I figured if I could be speedy and go the distance, I’d earn a tasty eggnog milkshake for dinner from Mike’s Drive-In. But I’d have to really earn it.
I decided on my crazy double-figure-8 loop modification of my normal Waterfront/Esplanade loop, which I guesstimate at 4.2 miles, give-or-take (I’ll check the actual distance and post it later). The weather was good, not too warm not too cold, overcast but not cloudy and definitely not raining. Wore my Adidas, shorts and a sleeveless shirt and my lucky Adidas hat. Running music was Foo Fighters.
And… I kept a steady pace, never significantly broke stride (I had to stop very briefly twice to cross Front Ave., and once right around the 3.5 mile mark I accidentally stopped to walk for about 10 steps before going back to a jog). I felt like I could maintain that pace forever, and, truthfully, I probably can, but it wasn’t the hard race-pace workout that I intended.
I finished in 51:34, though, which is definitely more towards the slow-but-steady and not in the hard-workout area. So my pace was a turtle-ish 12:16. Argh. So sad, I’m so sad, and not just because that means I didn’t really earn the eggnog milkshake. I really want to be faster. I’m not sure what’s holding me back.
So, a salad and some soy milk for dinner tonight. Yay. Tomorrow I’ll rest and then Wednesday I’m going to find some speed drills to work on.
In other news, I felt a sharp pain in my right foot stepping off the bus onto the edge of a curb. That’s the foot that’s been sore. At the race yesterday, I was talking about my heel pain (plantar fasciitis?) with a therapist and he suggested hydrotherapy. I expected on some numbness this morning, caused by all the hills I ran yesterday, but it wasn’t there. Oh, and I’m now wearing slippers with a fairly supportive sole; I read that it helps heal plantar fasciitis if you make sure to give the foot support in the morning right out of bed until it’s warmed up. So maybe that helped me. We’ll see. But then I stretched it out, painfully so, tonight getting off the bus. Argh. Again, rotten luck lately.