Tuesday, December 1, 2009

i'll have the milk steak boiled over-hard and a side of your finest jelly beans raw.

So I decided not to check the actual temperature before I went out for my run tonight.  A check of wunderground.com after the run let me know that it was 32 degrees out.   I thought it was cold but I figured it was right around 40...so much for that.  In my brilliance I decided since last night I was pretty warm with pants and a long sleeve. I wore a lighter long sleeve and shorts for my run tonight.  Whoops.

Anyway I just did the standard out and back 4 miler that I have been doing for a while now.  Turns out according to mapmyrun.com the distance is actually 4.23 miles.  Who knew?  I just figured I was running slow I am after all in horrible shape.  I completed the run in 31:44 which comes out to 7:30 pace, not too bad.  If only I ran 10 miles at that pace with a lot less effort and I could be moderately satisfied with it.

So the last mile of my run I kind of zoned out thinking about racing again which was a great feeling and it definitely made the time pass by quicker.  What confused me about it though was that I wasn't thinking about getting back in shape and running any kind of PR's all I thought about was running either to help pace someone else to a good time or as part of a distance relay race.  I have always felt this way about running and I am not sure why.  I have always preferred races where I was part of a team vs running just for myself.  Sure I always had my own goals for my races but I when I made the decision to run in college my ultimate goal was to run as a part of a 4x800 at Penn Relays not to qualify for nationals in anything individual.

Even when I was in my last year of college, I missed cross country nationals because of an injury and for whatever reason the coach chose not to run a 4x800 team at Penn Relays.  Still my two best races of the year were 1 the 4x800 at the New England Championships which we won and I had my best split of 1:55 and our conference championship where I chose to rabbit the mile for two of my teammates that were looking to get better new england championship and national qualifying times(Kevin didn't even have a new england's qualifying time yet)  I set a perfectly even first 1000 meters till they went flying by, at which point my coach told me if was ok to drop out, but I thought I could still hold on to score some points for the team so I did.

The point of this rant is I have no idea why it is easier for me to motivate myself into racing again to race with other people vs just motivating myself to race just for me.  I enjoy the experience of racing and I am always happy to run personal bests, I loved the ability to go out some days or nights and do a run as long as I liked 10 miles or 15 it didn't matter to me they were both just as easy, but none of that compares to being a part of a team and having the entire groups hard work pay off.  Who knows.

I thought this was a pretty funny quote as I had listened to some new Pat Condell videos on youtube I ended up going back and checking out some old ones.
So, I hope the Hindus have it right, because if there's any justice in this world, you (Islamists) will be reincarnated as a female, homosexual Jew, and then you'll find out what a pain it is having to deal with violent, primitive dickheads like you. (to domestically violent Muslim men) " - Pat Condell


So are there any relay trail or mountain races?  I know there are some relay Marathons

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