Running keeps my road rage at bay.

Workouts:

Saturday - 14 mile pace run
Sunday - 45 minutes on a hotel elliptical when what I really wanted was to get on the exercise bike but didn't see one until after I was on the elliptical for 20 minutes.  Oh well.


Have I mentioned that I absolutely positively with a hatred that cannot be described in any known words hate driving to Chicago?  No?  Well I hate driving to Chicago.  Like, REALLY hate it.  Why?  Because of this:

I should have just run to Chicago.  It would've been faster.

I also hate it because of that whole "parking" thing and that whole "tons of other people swarming around you at all times" thing and the "cops being extremely rude" thing.  But I had to suck all of my hatred up and hide it away somewhere, because I had to drive downtown yesterday for a presentation I gave at a conference today at the Marriott on the Magnificent Mile.

Look at that traffic.  And that was only about 20 minutes from my house.  I had a lot of hatred to suck up, let me tell you.

I think I would have lost it completely, however, if I hadn't run that morning.  I got up bright and early to do a 14 mile run that was on the training schedule.  This was a pace run, which meant I was to start slowly but then gradually speed up so that I was at goal pace by the end.  Some people know this as a progression run.  I know this as my "holy sh*t I don't know if I can do this" run.

The run started out pretty typical, if a little slower than normal (almost a 12 minute mile).  It was probably that tempo run the day before that was making my legs a wee bit tired.  Also typical was the fact that I had to pee by mile 3.  What was not typical was that I met another runner along my route, which takes me through country roads with very few houses and lots of farm animals and corn.

She was coming towards me on the other side of the road.  I waved as I passed her, but she didn't really acknowledge me.  I soldiered on, but realized I now had to do more than pee.  So I took a quick glance behind me to make sure she was far enough down the road not to notice me scampering off into the corn to add fertilizer to the field.

When I was done, I burst forth from the corn--only to find that she was coming BACK down the road and saw me emerge from the fields and stumble into the ditch.  Great.  Hoping she didn't live at the nearby house and was going to head in to call the police, I took off down the road away from her at a faster pace than I normally reach during mile 4.

Once I saw my mile 4 average pace, I challenged myself to stay in the 10's until the turn-around after mile 7. Then I made a new goal-keep it in the 9s for as long as I could on my way back.  As you can see, I met both goals.  I have never before in a training run slammed out so many miles so close to my goal pace (a 9:30).  You know what the one thought was that kept me going?

"You've run half-marathons faster than this-13.1 miles at an 8:35 pace.  You can kick it into the 9s for a while."

By mile 12 I was suffering.  But I kept hanging on, and my legs didn't slow down, even though my brain wanted nothing but.  I pushed through those last miles, something that I haven't done before on a training run,  But I think it's necessary in order to mentally train for the hurting that now I know will happen by the halfway point in my next marathon--train for the hurt, but also train how to get beyond it as well.

It was just the training I needed to deal with that damn traffic on I-90 later that morning.