Denial

I like to lie to myself.

For the past two weeks I've been telling myself that there's no way I could possible PR Saturday's 10-mile race. I've been running 10:19s, 10:40s, 10:49s on my longer runs. I couldn't run 10:04s. That's too much of a stretch.

Last night I went out telling myself that it was just one last "long" run before Saturday's race, but in the back of my mind, I wanted to see how fast I could run while still being somewhat comfortable. I didn't want to go balls-to-the-wall. C'mon. The race is two days away. But I wanted to push myself to go a little bit faster than my "just get the miles in" LSD pace. I wanted to see if it was possible to PR the race.

And it totally frickin' is.

I started off just running - I just ran the first three miles without worrying about pace. At the half-way point, I looked at my heart rate and realized that I wasn't really pushing myself. I was just running. So I kicked it up a notch so I would be running harder, but still at a comfortable pace.

My 10-mile PR is 1:40:36 - 10:04 miles. I ran 10:05 miles last night. Comfortably. So if I ran 6 miles at a comfortable pace, I think I could run 10 at that same pace.

So the pressure is on. A PR is possible, and I just admitted it to the Internet. I guess that means I'm going to have to push it tomorrow. Crap.

Mile 1: 10:06
Mile 2: 10:23
Mile 3: 10:32
Mile 4: 10:02
Mile 5: 9:59
Mile 6: 9:26

Average pace: 10:05
Total time: 1:00:31
Average HR: 165

Three words to describe this run: Delicious, Calming, Mental