Sometimes it IS just the little things...

I did it!  Ran my long run in the middle of the week (well, Thursday, maybe not the middle, but not the weekend).  I was really kind of dreading it to be honest.  I woke up at 5am, and lay there for a while.  The evening before my husband had expressed some grave concerns about me running in the dark.  I guess my Canadian brain still doesn't look at things with the cynical American eye that maybe it should...the fear factor isn't there for me the way maybe it should be living in the big bad USA.  I mean, look, I'm not saying that bad things don't happen in Canada, they do...but we still get shocked when they do...we don't have handguns, and people are a little less...postal.  It's true...we really are...nice.  No offense intended to the many many wonderful Americans I am proud to call my friends.  :)  And I don't disagree that I probably need to learn a little constructive fear.  (ugh).  I once saw a transplanted American comedian at the Stampede, and his whole bit was on the differences between Americans and Canadians on exactly this topic, and I have to admit it was not only damn funny, but very very true.

So, ANYWAY (good lord I can get off topic sometimes), to put his mind at ease, I decided to run a little later, when it wasn't so dark.  I'm fortunate enough to have a job that can be a little flexible this way.  I can log in from home and work at any hour of the day, I can dial in to lead meetings, and I can come in to work a little later if need be.  For this I am very grateful, and my ironman training is even more grateful.  (I will be calling on this blessing more than once over the next 4 months!!).  And so I did.  I worked for an hour, and then when the sun started to come up, I went out and ran.  I had a little longer than last week to go and so I figured this week I'd run 3 loops, plus a figure eight (the loop around the 'hood has a cut through in the middle), and then make up whatever I had left with the little jog up the flat part of my road.  The guys cutting the lawns in the business part of the 'loop' waved the first time, smiled the second time, looked a little surprised the third time, and they were already gone the fourth time.  lol.

So...getting to the title of today's blog...with the amount of training I am doing, and the tough nature of some of that training, it's easy to get caught in various levels of self-doubt.  So I think it's really important to take pride and pleasure in some of the little accomplishments on a day-to-day basis, and shift focus, if even for a moment, from the big scary-ass goal I have in front of me.  It was as I was rounding the last quarter loop, and coming up to 13 miles on the garmin, that I came to this realization.  And by the end of the run, I had 3 amazing things to be proud of:

1. The fact that I can run 13.1 miles without stopping still makes me smile and feel good about myself.  And on a hilly course to boot! I realize that this should not be a big deal for someone who runs the race distances that I run, and at the level I race them at, but the non-athlete who inhabited this body for 40-ish years still thinks it's pretty damn cool, and probably always will.  It's a little thing, but the little things add up. 
2. The fact that I can run 13.1 miles and still make the last miles faster than the first miles, and the last one fastest of all.  (see Coach - I do listen).  And at a pace that not all that long ago I thought was unattainable for me over that distance.  And this was just a training run!  Just goes to show that our minds are powerful things, and we can do whatever we set our sights on.  Also helps me believe that one day I can do it all that much faster than I am doing it now, and maybe running a half marathon at a sub-8:00 pace isn't all that crazy of an idea.  And not to mention that I can keep working on it, and get this pace to work for a full marathon.  :)
3. The fact that in a training run, I can set a PR for my half-marathon distance.  And not by a mere couple of seconds - I took a full three minutes off my time.  WooHoo!!!  Yes, that's what I did this morning.  How freaking cool is that.  It makes me think of my very first true running buddy, Colleen, who I set that PR with, who trained with me for my first half marathon through the long, snowy, often bitter-cold winter days of Calgary, and talked me into my first full marathon, and who will forever be the training buddy of my heart.  She doesn't know it, but she still runs beside me every now and then, and I miss her a lot!  She is far far away in Australia, and so I don't see her much.  But she is never far from my thoughts.  Hugs to you, Col. 

So the moral of the story is - take pleasure in the little things.  They really do make a difference.  I know I am pretty pleased with myself today.  And that's a good thing, because the rest of this training week may beat me up...

Happy Training!
Kat