In my last post (two months or so ago), I mourned my lack of encouragement to keep running, and vowed to set new goals to continue going.
In a way, I did. I didn't maintain the fitness to running a second half-marathon a month later, but I did keep running with coworkers. In that way, it worked. I have been running at least twice a week, except for the week that my uncle died (sort of puts a damper on things).
In any case, today I got the cabin-fever, and decided to go out for a run. Despite the air quality being less than ideal (there was a lot of smoke from a fire nearby) and no music, I decided to go out for a run. I figured it would be a nice 6km or so, but really, I was shooting for at least 10km.
As I headed out, I really did feel the air quality affecting me. I had to slow a little more at certain points, but I kept going. At one point, I passed one guy who was doing some meditation next to his bike. The next guy I passed was about 10 seconds later, and we agreed that the Meditation Guy had a better idea. But that was early on in the run, and I still had about 8k to go.
I decided that because my watch had started late, I would sort of guestimate where I should turn back. It was about 4.7km when I decided to strike north to my run-home road.
I did make one quick stop to check out Clancy's Meat shop, and continued on. It was uphill for the most part, with a fierce, sometimes unpredictable, wind that made the coming back much tougher than the going out.
In the end, it was a good 10k, with a suitable pace of around 6:30m/km. The wind notwithstanding, it was a very nice run overall, and I love the sort of latent tiredness in my muscles. It's been too long since I felt this way. The usual 5km runs just don't give me the same feeling of finale accomplishment as a long-run.
