Day Twenty Eight - Picking Up The Pace

As predicted, I didn't run on Thursday. I did get to go to the premier of The Wire though and ran into an old friend, so the day wasn't a total waste. Friday is one of our "off" days, but I decided to go for a short run to make up some mileage after work (actually, I was going to take the day off but G-Rocks sort of guilted me into it, even though she doesn't know she did). So I headed up to the gym after work. I decided to run on the treadmill so I could set a pace and see if I could keep up with it. After a quarter mile warm up I set the pace for 9:05 a mile (the next setting was 8:57, which seemed outrageously ambitious) and started huffing it. The first mile was...not so good. I felt a mild stitch near my right kidney and then another in my left abdomen. My legs were OK, and the speed wasn't really bothering me. If you've been reading I had mentioned altering my breathing and this was my first attempt at three in, three out for an entire run. It seemed to work pretty well. I also remember a piece of advice I was given by a runner in college for how to get rid of a cramp when you feel it coming on. She said that you should take as much breath in as possible and blow it out with as much force as you can. I have no idea whether this is sound advice or not, medically speaking, but since then it has seemed to work pretty well for me. I'm sure I have spent a lot of time sounding like a lunatic breathing in and out with as much energy as I can muster, but people do seem to get out of my way a lot, which is nice. So I breathed my way through the cramps. The second mile felt a little better than the first and the third felt very good actually. I finished the run in just about 31 minutes (the warm up and cool down added to the overall time) and felt a sense of pride that I could knock out 3 miles at the pace I hope to set for the marathon. Now, I'm not delusional enough to think that I can rock that pace for the whole 26.2, but the fact that I've got a couple of them in me is a start.

DAY 28
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 3.26
TOTAL MILEAGE: 57