3/12/2011

Training schedule says I will do: 3 miles

I actually did: 2.91 miles*⁺

*3.91 using Aubree’s Bonus Mileage System with 1 bonus mile for pushing the jogging stroller.

⁺ I forgot to start my GPS watch right away, and I did the same run today that I did last week, which was 3.01 miles, so I’m pretty sure that was my real distance.  When I logged it in my 1000 mile log, I did so as 3.01 miles. 

Days to go until the marathon: 195

Miles to go until 1000: 967.86

Red Hot Chili Peppers song played during the run: Yes**

** This is a new statistical category.  Whenever a Red Hot Chili Peppers song plays on a run, I always feel like one always plays on every run which is strange, because I’m pretty sure there are only 2, maybe 3, Red Hot Chili Peppers songs on my ipod.  But I realized today that my evidence for this belief is really only anecdotal, I have no scientific proof to back it up.  So I’m going to start tracking it.

My marathon training has officially begun!!  I wasn’t technically scheduled to do this run until tomorrow, but I got off work early today (which means I got off on time, well actually it was about 15 minutes late), and it was sunny and in the 50s.  And I thought, “I could do the run now, in the sun in my capri running pants and a short sleeve shirt, or I could do it tomorrow morning at 4 am before work, on spring forward the clock day, with a headlamp and cold weather running gear.”  It didn’t really seem like a fair contest.

I was thinking today on my run about how I have spent a lot of recent run time thinking about celebrity breakups.  (Today a J Lo song played, and I started thinking about how P Diddy was the guest singer on American Idol this week, and I wondered if that was weird for her.)  When I ran in residency, I almost always spent my time thinking about patients I had seen and second guessing the medical decisions I had made.  I don’t know if the fact that now I spend my time thinking about things covered in Us Weekly rather than the New England Journal of Medicine means I am more confident in my abilities as a doctor, or if it just means I’m better at leaving work at work.  Either way, it makes me sound a bit shallow now that I’m blogging about my running thoughts! 

My son in the jogging stroller started crying with about 0.5 miles left on my run today.  I don’t know if he was getting cold or if I went over a curb a little too aggressively for his tastes.  I came around to the front of the stroller to see if he was ok, and he reached his little arms out to me, in the universal and unequivocal sign for “Mama, pick me up!”  If his sad little tear-stained face hadn’t already been enough to break my heart, that gesture certainly would’ve done it.  I kicked it into high gear for the rest of the run so I could get him home and in my arms, and actually averaged a 10 minute mile for the last half mile or so . . . that may not sound impressive, but remember I am SLOW.  My half marathon PR was just under an 11 minute mile, and I have been averaging 11.5-12 minute miles when I push the jogging stroller.  So I was pretty proud of that pace; thank you, maternal instincts!  You’ll be happy to know that he stopped crying the second we got home and I picked him up.