What I would prefer to be doing on the beach.
I’ve been doing most of my long runs on courses and loops near my house at night. When I trained for the first marathon I did most of my walks down by the beach at night and I’ve been missing that. So for this week’s run I drove the couple miles to the beach (in the morning for a change) and ran into every commercial about California that I’ve ever seen. I ran past outdoor yoga classes, a tai chi class for seniors, a group of guys who had brought an entire gym’s worth of weights to the beach, functional fitness folks running around with tires over their heads, people with boogie boards (I think that’s what they’re called?), roller bladers, cyclists, and of course other runners. It was super cool to see so many people doing so many different things. Plus the beach looks completely different in the daylight, even though I’ve been down that trail tons of times it was completely new.
It was also a very different run – my neighborhood is built on a hill so every road is either uphill or downhill. I design my loops and courses so that they are equal parts up and down hill. The beach path is very flat which is much more like the course will be in Arizona for the half and the full. I was a bit slower (average speed) on my run than I am on my normal routes, but on the plus side I took far less walk breaks. In addition to getting used to the flat course, I also have to start getting used to the heat. So it looks like from now on I’ll be a running California cliche!
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Did you hear appropriate commercial music during your run?
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I started a modified Couch to 5k program a couple of weeks ago. I know you have been at this for awhile and I know you are much more athletic than I am. After all of this training, how much have you improved? I know I am improving. And I know everybody is different. But it’s so hard to gauge my progress. I feel like I should push myself a little more because it is going slow. And there isn’t a bunch of stories out there for people like us to compare ourselves too.
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