Almost 6 miles today!

I was on Hal Higdon's website and taking a look at his 10K Novice training program. He recommends doing a long run once a week, and not worrying about how fast you go.

So that's what I did today. I slowed my pace down by 0.5 mph, and ran for an hour. And I still had lots of gas left in the tank. I would have done another couple of minutes but I didn't want to stress out my left hip flexor and left quad too much. Total mileage with warm-up and cool-down was 5.94 miles.

I can't believe how slowing down by 0.5 mph makes such a difference!

I know I am a pokey runner - I set my treadmill at 5.8 mph and while I can have a conversation, I'm still breathing really hard when spitting out sentences. I'm sure my colleague N.B., who runs at 7.4 mph on the hamster wheel, walks at 5.8 mph! LOL.

My goal is to run at 6.0 mph - oh say, in one year's time. That would put me at just over an hour to complete a 10km run.

While I am frustrated that I'm not a natural-born gazelle, I have to remember that slow and steady wins the race, and my favourite quotation du jour:

I may not run fast...but I'm faster than the guy on the couch!

And how true that is...because one year ago, I was the gal on the couch! If anyone knows who said the above quotation, let me know and I'll credit him/her properly. :-)