I ran with Michael this morning. I'm not sure why I do it. It's a Monday and we don't have a required morning workout, so I could sleep in. To make it even worse is that instead of getting up like I normally would for a Tue-Fri workout, Michael has me there a half hour early ... so not only no sleeping in, but it's like getting extra credit with Rick!
Before we started, he said, "we'll go at an easy pace." I thought that meant 12:00 minutes per mile. We wound up averaging 9:54 per mile, which is a pretty smart clip for me. I was laboring near the end ... it felt like something was sucking the oxygen directly from my lungs. I probably lost a full pound from all of my "Tanky Hanky" maneuvers (which is what I'm not calling a "snot rocket").
Then there was the distance ... eight miles. I've done better than 9:54 on other runs, but never that many miles at that pace. To get the full eight miles, we ran the perimeter of every parking lot we entered (we ran around the Glenbook Mall). The mall cops likely thought we were a couple of elderly men looking for our car.
Was it really that bad? Pushing myself further and faster wasn't easy, but it was genuinely enjoyable. We chatted a little while we ran and the time passed a bit quicker that way. I wouldn't change my Monday morning runs at all ... well, I'll change them eventually ... we'll get that time down to 9:45 and the distance up to 8.5 ... and then we'll need to change it again after that.
Whoever came up with this mentor idea must have ate all their oatmeal that morning ... it has been a really good idea.
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