A Good Day

In the most hot-and-cold training cycle ever (I feel like every post is either me thinking of quitting or being totally psyched about this training cycle), yesterday was a good day.

Sometimes, the most satisfying part of training is being able to fit in workouts at all, and yesterday, when I was unwilling to sacrifice sleeping in and a night on the couch, I RUNCHED (Runch = Running at lunch). And survived. Sure, I arrived back at the office red-faced and with wet hair pulled back in an only mildly professional-looking bun and inhaled my lunch in .5 seconds, but I did it. In 1:15, door-to-door. You can just send all the prizes in the world right over to me whenever you have a chance.

For my first-ever runch, I decided to try to make the most out of the 30 minutes I had, and instead of 3 slow “junk miles” (I believe that slow runs are valuable, but that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing lately, and junk miles on the treadmill are pretty much the worst thing ever), I’d give this treadmill workout a try:

Treadmill workout (source)

I modified it quite a bit, knocking .2 off of all the paces, taking the incline down to 0.5 (because 1.0 = ew) and walking one minute of some of the two-minute recoveries, and it still kicked my butt all over the gym. Sprinting at 7.8 mph, even for one minute, is no joke, people. And I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day. Sometimes, the biggest accomplishment of a training cycle is simply making the time to challenge myself and fit in workouts at all, and I was really, really proud of this one.

And I rode those endorphins all the way through a super-productive afternoon at the office, listening to two new favorite running songs on repeat as I bounced through my to-do list (do. not. judge. me.):

I also can’t say enough about the amazing support of the entire running Twitter/blog community that I felt was really overflowing yesterday. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a busier day on Twitter: we planned for future group trips to Flywheel and for some of us Refine Method virgins to finally give it a try, I got cheered on when I tweeted about my goal to Runch, we gushed about loving running, we sent our support to friends who were nervous about their planned evening workouts… it really reminded me why I’ve chosen to be part of this community. Yes, sometimes I complain that it leads me to an unhealthy world of comparisons and beating myself up for not being perfect, but on days like yesterday, it is wonderful. Seeing so much positivity blowing up my Twitter feed every time I checked it really made for a great way to bookend a strong workout.

And on top of everything else, the running tights I had been coveting for months finally arrived! Oiselle Lesley tights, welcome to the family.

I have a feeling that this is going to be a training cycle chock-full of highs and lows, and right now, I’m hoping that yesterday was the beginning of a very, very long high. I think Jen put it pretty perfectly:

I am really, really loving running right now.It’s kind of the best.

— Jen G. (@JensBestLife) February 6, 2013

And it really is.

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