Time: 7:00am
Distance: 3.93 miles
Pace: 12:13

Ugh. I should have been working harder these last couple of weeks. My last two runs have been terrible. Saturday morning I ran the slowest I've run in a looong time, which I'm attributing to two things - 1) I don't have Jeremy here to run with me and keep me motivated, and 2) I ate before I ran, which meant I ended up with a side stitch.

The first mile was about average pace and actually felt pretty good. With mile 2 came the beginnings of a side stitch, and I stopped to walk a couple of times. It also began to rain lightly, which was nice and refreshing, but I think I started to speed up a little and I ended up walking again. Not wanting to look like a goof who was walking in the rain, I tried to force myself to run. At mile 3 I said to myself, "This is ridiculous - you can do much better than this" and I told myself that I was going to run the rest of the way home. I ran at a decent pace until I got to the main street and then, on the home stretch, I tried to kick it in as hard as I could. The fact that I was able to do this meant that I had clearly not run to the best of my ability because I still had so much left in the tank. I know that on training runs you're not supposed to run at your race pace, but I know I can do much better than I did.

My next run is the first on my training schedule in preparation for the MCM 10k. It's only 3 miles at an 11:26 pace. Back in June Jeremy and I had run the 3 mile route at a 10:52 & 10:42 pace, so I'm absolutely certain I can do 11:26. I hope that having that goal time in mind will help to give me the push I need. We'll see how it goes.