Time flies when you're having a run

Day:         24
Distance: 10.28km
Time:       1:04:57 secs
Calories:  826

This is the second Wednesday in a row on which Jim and I have ventured out into the dark, rainy night for a post-work run and this is the second Wednesday in a row when I've felt gutted at the end of it.

Last week I was somewhat chagrined to find that what I thought was a 12km run was, in actual fact, just over 10km. This week was different. Neither of us were wearing watches last night, but as we were on the home straight Jim predicted that we were going to "smash" the time in which we'd done this run in last week. It would prove to be a misguided forecast.

It was an uncomfortable start to the run for me as for the first couple of kilometres my calves felt as if  they were made of concrete. If this had been the run straight after the 17km run on Sunday I'd have understood, but Monday's run went off without a hitch so I'm not quite sure what the problem was. At the back of my mind I was wondering whether I would have to knock this run on the head in order to rest a little before the longer run I have scheduled for this weekend. That sounded too much like loser talk, so I ran through the discomfort. No pain, no gain and all that. Probably.

By the time Jim suggested that we were on for a quicker time I was running with ease and was really enjoying being out, so I readily agreed that we would finish in under an hour. A quick glance at the top of this post will show that I was woefully wrong, while a look back at the post I wrote at this time last week will also show that Jim was wrong (we ran the same route in 1:04:48 secs last week).

I'm not too sure why we greeted this time with such incredulity, it's not as though we went out with the express intention of smashing our previous time. I suppose we both wanted to see progress. Being able to see improvements (i.e. getting faster, running further, running for longer etc.) is an important element of training. As with many things, you want to see that you're getting something back from all the effort that you put in.