Hey everyone, it’s Monday! Mondays are typically rough on everyone, so here’s some motivation to make today a good one!
Also, if you want to start the day out well, remember to make a list of great aspects of your personality, or things you are thankful for!
Guess what? I only have 2.5 more Mondays!!! Haha the .5 is because we have one day to “make up” not having class on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I don’t know if all my teachers will take advantage of that day… I sure hope not!
What’s scary about that is we have 2 weeks of class left and I only have a couple days before my finals begin! I just have to power through!
One thing that always keeps me sane during stressful times is getting in a workout! Exercise and sleep are two things that I never give up during finals. I might cut my workouts short, but I always make sure to do something! Yesterday I did an 8 mile run in preparation for the 10 miler I’m running in 2 weeks. It was SUPER windy out, but I started off my run through the zoo to make things more interesting!
The zoo is really close to where I live, so I’ve actually been there quite a few times. I like to just walk or run through when I get a chance because I find it so relaxing! Every time that I go there is never a polar bear in the polar bear exhibit. Honestly, I didn’t believe that it existed. I thought maybe they used to have one, but just never changed the signs.
Well guess what I saw yesterday?!
THE POLAR BEAR!!! It exists!!!!
He was up on the rocks when I saw him, and then he started swimming! He dove down underneath the water quite a bit, it was so cool!
Yea, I run with the polar bears!!!
The zoo actually ended up being very distracting… Because it had rained all night and the weather was so nice, all the animals were out. I mean ALL of them! I saw all the big cats, bears, zebras, llamas, etc! You name it, I saw it! But I only stopped to take a picture of the polar bear, gotta keep my priorities straight.
The rest of the run was alright, but I was so sore from my workouts this week! I kept reminding myself: “This is supposed to be hard, if it wasn’t hard then everyone would be doing it!”
I finished the 8 miles in 1:16:38 for an average pace of 9:34 min/mile. I was actually surprised, since I was trying to get a 10:00 min/mile pace, which is the pace I’m supposed to do for my training runs.
To figure out the pace I needed for my training runs, I used this calculator, based on Jack Daniel’s formula. I put in my most recent time for my half marathon, and here are the times it came out with:
I was actually REALLY surprised by these, 10:32 for a long run pace?? I don’t think I’ve ever run that slowly since I started keeping track of pace! I realized the half wasn’t my best race, so then I put in the time for my other most recent race, the 10 miler I did in November and that time it cut off about 20 seconds for each pace time. I think that’s a lot closer to what I should be doing, especially since I know I’m capable of running faster!
I guess my biggest issue with these paces that I’m given is that I don’t really understand why? I mean, I know you’re supposed to run slower on long runs. On Hal Higdon’s site he says to run at a pace at which you can keep up a conversation. But this just seems a lot slower than I would have guessed! Definitely something to look in to!
Do you know anything about pacing? Help!
When was the last time you went to the zoo?