First Training Run

...and boy was it a cold one. What a difference a week (not even quite) can make! I went running last Thursday (four short days ago) in shorts and short-sleeves and actually felt hot 4 miles into my run. The temperature was close to 70 degrees. On Monday night, the temperature was a balmy 28 degrees with an even lower windchill. This feels cold enough under normal circumstances, but it feels even colder when your body is not accustomed to the cold. It really shocks the system. The cold air hitting me when I opened the door really made me want to pass on going out to run and curl up on the sofa under a nice warm blanket.

Added to that was the fact that last night was my first night on 3rd shift since June and that I only got 6 hours of sleep. I had to stay over in the morning to conduct an interview and I didn't get home until 9:00am when I generally get home closer to 7:00am. I got into bed at 9:30am and had the alarm set for 3:30pm. When the alarm went off I must have been in a dead sleep because I was completely disoriented. I didn't know what day it was at first and what time of day it was(night or day). It took me the entire walk across the room to the alarm clock to figure out that it was Monday afternoon and that I had worked 3rd the night before...weird. Anyway, as you can imagine, it took me quite a while to be completely coherent. I really was going to bag the run for the night and push it back to Tuesday, but I got to reading some old posts from a message board where we used to post running related mesages and it inspired me to brave the cold and start my marathon training in style. It's amazing sometimes what difference a little motivation or inspiration can make. It truly can be the difference between spending half of your life on the couch getting fat or getting outside and doing something healthy for yourself.

I did a 3-mile tempo run and actually felt half decent on the run although {brrr} it was cold. I could hardly feel my feet for about the first mile and a half. By the 2-mile mark though, I was warm and toasty. It does feel good now to have gotten a run in first thing for the week. My plan now is to go to the track on Wednesday to do
my 8 x 400m repeats. Good start so far. Now I just need to keep the momentum going.