Lather, rinse, repeat

Lately, this is me every time I go for a run.

Before: Just go, enjoy, don’t even worry about your pace, just do what feels comfortable, this is for fun anyway.

During: This is great it’s so beautiful I don’t care about my pace I could do this all day I LOVE RUNNING

After: Oh my god why am I so slow what is happening to me I am terrible at this don’t look at me I’m hideous.

And I would really like to get over this.

I don’t know what’s going on with me but my pace has gotten significantly slower this year, and I’m trying to get it back up a little and also trying not to care. So I may be at cross purposes with myself here. Last year I did a Run the Year challenge and I was running about 45 miles a week, and I got really fast and confident, so maybe since my mileage has gone down so much, my pace has too. It could also be that I started doing more cross training; I thought that was supposed to help but it could just be fatiguing me. I could be slowing down with age, or I could just blame it on this stupid plantar wart that I’ve had all year and is driving me insane. And having said all that, I also just really want to get over caring about it so much and just enjoy the run. I did 13 hilly miles today and felt great! Then I looked at my Garmin when I was done and felt…not terrible, but a lot less great. I’m finally going to go ahead and register for the Seattle Half; it’s coming up soon and it’s my favorite race. I’m trying to go into it just expecting to do a personal worst and try try try to feel okay about it. But I pretty much always feel like I could have done better at the end of a race so I doubt this will be the exception. But we’ll see!