Six Good Miles.

I had a meeting thrown on my schedule in the late afternoon yesterday, and so missed my personal training appointment. But I am not sorry I did. I really needed to run. I have been running less in the winter, in part to let my body recover from a hard year of constant distance training, and in part because it’s so dark and I hate running in the dark. But yesterday I was able to get out while it was early twilight and made it home an hour later while there was still a bit of gloaming.

I ran 6.3 miles in a shade under an hour. That’s a good pace for me, pretty close to my half-marathon personal record pace. A bit slower than my 10K record pace. But a satisfyingly brisk clip in cool weather, during a time when I’ve been logging fewer miles. I’m hoping to break two hours when we run the Virginia Beach half marathon in March, so I need to get a little speed work in from time to time. And to achieve that, I need to be able to run a 10K in right about 56 minutes. Which, coincidentally, was my time last summer.

While I’m definitely hoping to break two hours this year, I’m not hanging my hat on it. If I do I do, if I don’t I don’t. I’m not going to feel like I’m a failure if I don’t achieve that goal. Time goals are good goals for me because even if I don’t succeed, the value of trying is always positive. I have to work hard for it and working hard physically pays off, even if the goal I set was too ambitious. Time goals are bad goals for me because I don’t want to shackle my self-worth to a clock.

But I don’t think it is too ambitious. Our last half marathon was 2:02:16 (well, BB was 2:02:15 but the difference between us was less than a second; we were holding hands). I think I have the legs to run 11 seconds per mile faster than that race. It’ll be a challenge, but I think it’s a doable one. I’m looking forward to finding out anyway.