After a great ride last night, I opted to head to dinner with the group. I don't usually stay because of time restraints on the family, but DH and the boys had gone to the $1 movie last night while I rode and wouldn't be home any time.
After dinner, I got to talking with my run group head coach and my friend from the accident on Sunday (she came out for an easy run and dinner.) I was talking about my run yesterday morning - and how I felt that I could have pushed myself harder (faster) than I did.
My head coach said "Your problem is that you set your expectations too high."
Hmmm...
Why isn't a tempo run at almost 2 minutes faster than my long run pace good enough? Oh, yeah, because I hate my long run pace and want my tempo pace to be my long run pace. I expect with all the running I do, an increase in speed should come naturally.
But...
Realistically, I didn't take training seriously last fall/winter. Come to think of it, I've never taken running training very seriously. Even my tri-training isn't as focused as I want it to be. (side note: it is kind of hard to train for two endurance events at the same time...)
For ING, I didn't do the work. I didn't put in the mileage, the speed work, the tempo runs, the long runs. I could have done serious damage that day. I dropped back in pace groups to a more comfortable long run pace. I'm opting to focus on consistency, which means getting the distances in. I should be sacrificing speed for distance. Trying (Expecting) to increase both simultaneously is a recipe for injury (failure*).
So, I'm going to work on wrapping my head around the 'it's good enough' idea. Miles over Time (for the most part, I obviously still need to push myself some.) Maybe next year, I can worry about going faster.
*No, I'm not saying your a failure if you get injured and can't train/compete. I'm saying that getting injured is a failure to accomplish the goal of crossing the finish line.
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