Please don't slow me down

From an early age, I've constantly been told to slow down. While family, professors, bosses, and friends may couch it differently, calling me out for being hasty, slap dash, poor attention to detail, ADD, careless, jumping into things, it all boils down to one simple fact: I hate doing things slowly.  Attribute it to my desire to cram as much as humanly possible into a single minute, competitive nature, or general lack of patience, but either way, this mindset has gotten me into more trouble than I care to mention.

Case in point:

3rd grade teacher: "Are you sure you're finished? You only took 15 minutes to complete the test...it's 6 pages!"
little mm: "Of course! I even quadruple checked my answers (clearly a boldfaced lie). I'm just a super awesome fast reader! [cue winning grin]" This is when I learned a valuable academic lesson - they don't give gold stars for 16/30s.

And don't give me the benefit of the doubt that wisdom came with age. Lab rats learn faster than me. Take last (or any if we're being really honest) weekend for example:

Liver: "You need to slow down with those drinks, Munn. You're crazy if you think I can handle 10 tequila shots in a row."
MM: "STFU, internal organ, you don't know ME. I do what I please." I think we all know how this ends. First word's a color and phrase rhymes with whack pout?

As an "adult," I've rebranded my disdain for slowpokeyness as being "efficient." Ha. False. However, my proclivity to speed through life is proving to be pretty incompatible with my tape(r)worm. Slow and steady maintenance runs are the name of the game during a taper. A runner's goal should be minimize the accumulated fatigue of marathon training by working in enough miles to maintain fitness but most importantly CHILL OUT.  According to the runner's bible (aka RW), all runs should be at a relaxed pace, 1.5 to 2 minutes slower than marathon pace.  Hmmm, bo-rrrrring. Not to boast, but I'm in the best shape of my life and am chomping at the bit to let loose after 3 months of responsible, methodical training.

So of my last two runs, we can deem one a success by taper standards and the other an utter failure. Let's talk about my fail run first as it was infinitely more enjoyable than my more responsible win run.  Yesterday, I took a much needed break from my home the office for a mid-week run, a low-key 10 miler.   I started off slightly quicker than I should have, running the first 6 miles at ~9:45 pace, which is a bit faster than most of my long runs. Obviously not quite in line with the taper guidelines, but not the end of the world. And excitingly I felt great! Minimal joint twinging, easy breathing, and no calf pain. So I picked up the pace, finishing mile 7 in 8:30. Thoughts of the ever growing pile of work waiting for me in my cube hastened me to up it to 8:00 for miles 8 and 9. I clocked 7:40 for the last mile since you always have to kick it at the end and I wanted to avoid imaginary muggers prowling the dark Westside Highway. Whoops? Definitely NOT how I was supposed to run, but oh it felt excellent. Cocky little old me was humming the refrain to this song on my way home:


















Reality check time. Today's 6 mile lunchtime jaunt was run responsibly and it sucked. Hard. I knew I screwed up yesterday so I vowed to maintain a relaxed 10:15 pace. Ugh. My legs felt sluggish at that pace, and were longing to break free and run like the wind. End result was a constant war between what my mind was telling my body to do and what my troublesome legs thought they could get away with. Every few minutes I had to force myself to reign it in; sometimes even taking walk breaks to break my pace. Finished the run in a little under an hour, so obviously not at my goal pace but close enough. Why does doing the right thing have to be so mind numbingly dull?

Le sigh. I've resigned myself to keeping it in my spandex and plodding along for the next two weeks in preparation for the big day. The last thing I want is to blow all my training by not recovering adequately before the race. But after the MCM, anything's fair game. I'm looking forward to testing my hard earned fitness on the street this fall with a medium-distance race. December's Ted Corbitt 15K FTW, perhaps?