Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke
This morning’s run began with something I am becoming quite accustomed to this summer.
Rain.
When I first woke up, the weather had other plans for my morning, so I postponed my run and went back to sleep for another hour. Sometimes disciplined training requires determination. Sometimes it requires hitting the snooze button.
Fortunately, when I woke again, the rain had paused. I quickly got ready and headed outside before the weather had an opportunity to reconsider. The rain had at least given me one advantage.
Although the humidity was extremely high, the temperature had dropped, making the conditions somewhat more tolerable. After so many hot and humid mornings in Nashville this summer, I’ll happily accept whatever assistance the weather is willing to provide.
Running has been difficult lately. It seems as though we have had one hot day after another, usually accompanied by enough humidity to make the air feel considerably heavier than it has any right to be. Still, unless the weather becomes unsafe, I keep running.
This morning, however, my body wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the idea. I felt sluggish from the beginning, and the first half of my run was nearly as slow as yesterday’s. At one point, I was about 90 seconds behind my target pace.
That wasn’t exactly encouraging. But a bad first half doesn’t require a bad second half. Instead of accepting the slower pace, I concentrated on pushing harder. Gradually, I began recovering some of the lost time. By the finish, I had reduced my 90-second deficit to 42 seconds.
Technically, I still failed to reach my target. But I don’t consider the run a failure. I managed to recover more than half of the time I had lost during the first portion of the run. More importantly, I finished much stronger than I started.
Sometimes progress isn’t crossing the finish line ahead of your target. Sometimes it is being 90 seconds behind, refusing to surrender the run, and finishing only 42 seconds behind. The stopwatch may not award partial credit.
Fortunately, I can. Next week brings my shorter runs, and today’s stronger finish gives me some reason for optimism. Perhaps the speed is still there. It just needed a little extra time to wake up this morning. Apparently, it wanted to use the snooze button too.