Push Yourself

     Pushing Myself (2 of 3)

The next two posts in this 3-part series focus on the single idea of ‘Pushing Myself’ that played out two different ways between the Gasparilla 15K and Gate River Run 15K.  Thankfully, the better scenario plays itself out later in the series.  I learned from the poor preparation and made a good adjustment! 

At the end of February I squeezed in the Gasparilla 15K.  My calendar of events didn’t fully align with the Gasparilla 15K, but I wanted to give it a ‘go’ and put myself on the line for the straight-forward challenge.  I couldn’t bow-out because I wasn’t fully prepared.  Not these days.  Might as well run hard, push myself, and see what I could do --plus it’s such a great local race with such great people and I've got history with it!

1993 - Susan was the director then and still is now!

I ran a bit better than I suspected, but we all know that when the gun goes off, I’m going to go hard.  I could only go so hard due to fitness.  Gasparilla 15K = Flat out & back race.  I ran 6:16s over the first half/6:15s over the second half.  Pretty dang good execution.  Controlled, but hard.  I ran the first 7.5 or so miles side-by-side with EW.  (I wrote about EW in my initial post  about the Disney Marathon).

Thanks, MarathonFoto!

So—to get to it: What stuck out is that when EW took off with about 1.5 miles to go, I couldn’t respond/ I couldn’t match it.  It wasn’t just physical.  Much of it was, yes; however, I had no recent experience in pushing myself.  I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t have the drive, I didn’t feel compelled, I lacked practice.  I had nothing to pull from for motivation or need.  I hadn’t worked for it.  She got away from me tenth-by-tenth and I had no fight.   I enjoyed running a good hard race, but I didn’t enjoy not being in the fight!

Afterwards I reflected and figured Gasparilla would be a good practice and wake-up call before the Gate River Run 15K two weeks later in March.  I recognized I needed to run and practice pushing myself before the Gate River Run.  I wasn’t going to line up in my hometown… in the women’s elite crowd…wearing New Balance head-to-toe… and not be significantly more aggressive. A couple days later came the hilly bridge repeats late on a windy morning.