Time-only runs are fun

I did my forty-five minute Thursday run in the evening, which was interesting, since I’d been pre-dawn running all summer.

Advantages to evening run:

• More energy. This may be related to fact that I’d ingested food within the past five hours. The forty-five minute run was actually a piece of cake, and I’ll probably do an hour run early next week.

Disdvantages:

• My stomach didn’t like the idea of me having eaten or drunk anything in the past several hours, and complained with some sloshing and light nausea.
• My legs actually got tired. I’ve been running in some form or another since November 2003, and my legs have never gotten tired. I blame this on the fact that my job has me on my feet much of the day.
• Traffic. My neighborhood is busy with kids and cars at 18:30. No one is out at 05:20. I’m still self-conscious about running in shorts, so this required a bit of mental fortitude.

I am, however, learning some tricks to make things easier. For instance, things go much smoother if I distract myself for the first 15 minutes of the run. Replay the events of the day, create a (non-sexual) fantasy, design a program or database, something other the fact that my lungs are laboring and my boobs hurt. There is to be no watch-checking for the first 15 minutes, either.

I’ve also found that I like the time-only runs much better than I like distance-specific running. I don’t have to keep track of distance/laps, and I can just go, which is fun. I think I’m going to keep this up until the winter pulls me inside to use the treadmill.

(I’m also almost up to running an hour, which is a big personal goal acheived.)