running the day

Remember that time I humble bragged about my run gains? You know, those two whole minutes I knocked off my four mile runs. Feel free to call me supersonic.

Yeah, well. It turns out, you're not supposed to be racing every run you do. Who knew? Not me! 

Now, Ryan (who has been trying to convince me for months) has reiterated that I need to run slower if I want to be faster. And I want ALL the gains. It's just really hard for me. It feels like it adds hours to my runs when in truth it really doesn't. I just hate feeling slow and those 45-60 seconds I add to each mile make me feel like I'm losing my pace.

I did run slower this past week and I think I'm seeing some improvements. My average heart rate is down and I never really feel as out of breath as before. So I think I'm in the zone. The aerobic vs. anaerobic zone. I'm definitely sweating more, if that's any indication. But I know that the key to any good training is persistence. So, unfortunately, I'll keep sluggin' along.

My real motivator for running anyway is food. That and how it makes me feel, but mostly for food. And every Monday morning I get this amazing email from Smashrun. It tells me my distance total for the past week and how it compares to the week before. It shows a high level view of my runs and of course, my average pace. For now, I'm skipping right over those.

I go right for the food. Because for as much calories I burned this past week, I want to know what I could've eaten. And I don't know about you but bacon wrapped pineapple bites sound fabulous. Straight up FAB. Bacon wrapped tater tots?! TO DIE FOR.

Even better is that I can switch up the food theme. I'm leaning towards dessert but I'm sure it won't help my insatiable appetite (runger is real!). I should probably switch it to something healthy. Seafood, maybe? Vegetarian?

What would you pick? Are you on Smashrun? You can find me here. I've been using the site for about a year now and really like the whole system. It gives me highlights about my runs and puts it all in graph form. Which, naturally, makes my finance based heart go pitter patter.

On the site, I like that the badges. They keep me motivated to run. There's three different sets of them with 117 in total. So far I have 27 and I'm on track to earn another on Thursday.

Today though, today, I started a different challenge, which in a year's time will get me another badge. I'll give you a hint - I'm aiming for something of a streak...Crazy? Probably. Going to happen? I'm damn well going to try.

Until the next run, I'll see you out there.

- A. Rae

Please know that I am not sponsored by Smashrun. I pay for the pro membership out of pocket because I think it's super neat. It does have a free service, which is still really great, so if you're a runner, and not on Smashrun, you can check it out here.