Friday, March 30, 2012

Enjoying the beginning of race season

As you well know, motivation has been a bit of a struggle for me. Despite the extremely mild winter in New England (snow-wise), I ended up doing a lot of indoor riding on the trainer, and very little outdoor running. I'm happy to report that we've had nicer temperatures and that's gotten me out in the great outdoors.

I also did what I haven't done for 2 1/2 years: I entered a race. I ran in the Shamrock Shuffle in Manchester, NH. It was an extraordinarily short race of just 2 miles, but it was a race nonetheless. It required me to be somewhere at a certain time, put on a race number, stand around in a huge group waiting for the start, and then actually running.

It felt great.

When you don't race, you forget about how good it feels to complete a race, even if you run regularly. And it did feel good. Mind you, I ran with a friend and didn't push myself. I easily finished the 2 miles in about 18 minutes. No land speed record by any account, but it was easy, and it reminded me that it wasn't a big deal.

Tomorrow, I'm doing the Gilmanton 5K. It's supposedly quite hilly, but I'm not all that concerned. As I was driving home, I just thought to myself: "Self: this is 3 miles. I can do this easily." That's a good feeling to feel that level of confidence, even if it's for something as short and achievable as 3.1 miles. I like what the feeling of race season is doing for me, and it's getting me motivated to increase the distance and the frequency.

I've needed this.

2 comments:

Marlene said...

Glad to see you getting back at it! You just needed to catch the big again. Have fun!

Petraruns said...

hey! You're back! that's wonderful! Racing is SO good for getting you back into the swing of it, the juice of it, the enthousiasm of it. Come do a race over here! Now there's motivation!