Personal Best!

Okay, so I finished my morning run about 45 minutes ago, and I'm still in a bit of shock. This morning, I woke up a bit on the late side... around 7:30. It all started last night when I got in from my Tuesday night trivia group. I always seem so tired when I leave there (I guess two amaretto sours will do that to you) but by the time I get home, I get a second wind. So, I didn't actually turn my light off until midnight, and I adjusted my clock to let me sleep in a bit. My alarm went off at 7, but I didn't roll out of bed until 7:30. In my head, a little voice said "this run is going to be as crappy as Monday's 'cause you slept in too late." But I shrugged off, threw on my running clothes and drove to the stadium.

When I got there, I decided to try something a little different. First, I did my warmup walk through a neighborhood not too far from the stadium/hospital complex. Then, when I turned around towards the stadium to start my 25 minute run, I didn't take my usual route. Instead, I followed some paths around the stadium, and looped through the hospital parking lot until I got to the path that I usually take. I followed that path for a while before I once again deviated off the path and through the parking lot (much better on my knees than concrete sidewalk). At one point I looked at my pedometer (did I mention that it's stuck on kilometer mode and won't switch back to miles?) and it said 2.4 km. Um... I've been averaging 3.6 km on these 25 minute runs (and yes, that includes warm up and cool down walks). So, that freaked me out. I thought that deviating from my usual path totally messed up my run.

It got to the point where, about 18-20 minutes into the run, my legs felt like lead. Seriously, it was like someone put leg weights on me. I also felt so tired, like I couldn't keep going, that I just wanted to curl into a ball on the lawn next to the smokers and die. But I put some Eminem on (Lose Yourself is a great motivational song!) and kept going. Got to my car and looked at the pedometer.

4.66 kilometers. That's 2.8 MILES. Are you kidding me?????? I did that with a 10 minute walk and a 25 minute run?????? So, then I started questioning myself. Could the pedometer have misfunctioned? Did it really seem like I ran that far? Is something messing with me?

But, finally, 45 minutes later, a calm has come over me. I DID IT. I kicked the 25 minute run's butt. Me. Crappy Monday run Kiki. Drank one too many amaretto sours last night Kiki. Feeling super heavy since her food and drink orgy for all of last week Kiki. Me.

I am proud. I feel strong. I did it.