I can be mean

I had a good solid run this morning and I think with it I have turned a bit of a corner.

The morning didn't start well. My nose had been stuffed up all night and when I first woke up I didn't feel great. I even turned off the alarm and stayed in bed for a while. Once I did get myself up I was second guessing how I was feeling, whether I might be getting sick, what a long run was going to do to my hamstring. Mr Negative Thoughts that is for sure.

To check whether I might have been feeling a little off colour I checked my heart rate. Nothing abnormal there, so that excuse was out the window and if I was honest with myself my hamstring felt okay.

Running out of excuses I told myself to get over it and get on with it. With that I was out the door. In the end that was fairly indicative of how the rest of the run went. Over the course of the run I ended up having  several conversations with myself. Turns out I can be pretty mean. A bit before the halfway mark I decided that I was going to pick up the pace. My Negative Thoughts tried pretty hard to return, with efforts along the lines of 'the pace is too quick' and 'this is hard'. My response was 'get over it because this is the pace we are going to hold and complaining isn't going to change that'.

On the whole I think it worked. I still faded a bit in the last 3kms, but that was just the exhaustion setting in. The run wasn't a PB for the distance, but it wasn't far off.

The main take away from the session though was reminding myself how to hurt again. My mind has been a bit all over the place since Busselton. First from absorbing the race and then from the craziness of this time of year. I think a part of me has been a bit on autopilot. This run (and the ride yesterday actually) felt a bit like snapping out of that. My fitness isn't quite where I would like it to be, but it is close. The sessions from the last two days have shown that to me.

I also had a nice easy recovery swim on the program, which I decided to do not long after the run. I felt like I needed it, so I headed down to the river with the family and had a bit of a jog and a swim around mid-morning. Perth has been working its way up to 35 degrees today, so jumping into the river after a long hot run felt great.

In other exciting news, my sister entered her first triathlon yesterday. It is the women's only tri that is run in March down here in Perth. There are several distances but she has entered the long one, which is the length of a sprint distance tri. I haven't been around in Perth for this event before, but everything I have heard from the Darwin equivalent has been really positive. My understanding is that the Perth version is just as good. Let the unrequested advice begin...