Impossible

5 miles/ 1 hour exactly

When did running become so difficult? Today's run was dismal, even though I took a bunch of precautions to make it better than Tuesday's atrocity. I ate an english muffin with jelly to give myself some fuel before I went out, I carefully monitored my water intake, I did some little stretches, and most importantly, made it out when the marine layer was still nice and thick. I even had garmin on me so I could monitor my pace and make sure I wasn't pushing myself too hard (although I knew that probably wasn't the case).

I am so stiff and sore. I think that the problem is the hills. There is nothing flat out here, it is all hills. Less than a mile in I wanted to stop, I felt like I was going to drop dead. If another runner hadn't passed me by I think I would have just walked home. Trying to do a tempo run on hills is impossible for me right now. I was supposed to maintain 11:33 but the stupid garmin just yelled at me the whole time. Average pace was 12:00/mi. The good thing is that if I can keep my chin up and stick with the training, all these hills are really going to help my improve my time for SBIM. Pretty sure the screaming beeps of the garmin are going to haunt me in my sleep.

I'm trying to channel positive running memories, but it isn't easy. I keep flashing back to Boston and the 4 miles I cried as I ran because I was in sooooo much pain. Thank goodness for this blog allowing me to look at past entries where I was celebrating running instead of complaining about it. I used to love the challenge of hills, and now I LOATHE them. I think I still have a lot more work to do to get my mind back into the right place for training. I think a job offer would help ;)

One more long run scheduled for Sunday but will likely be Monday morning due to travel. Supposed to be 10 miles. I might have to drive out to find a flat place for this one, not sure I can do 10 miles of hills at this point.