Run #29: Another 5k Under My Belt

Did it again.  (No, that's not me.  I'm not THAT round anymore.)

I joyfully realized today that I really only had four runs left: tonight, Friday, Tuesday and Thanksgiving.  Thus, I decided to forgo the 8-minute mile and just try to run 5k for the rest of my runs.

Well, that was dumb.  After doing yet another 5k tonight, I wonder why I would want to do that to myself.

I did it in 29:21, which is essentially a tie for my record (29:20), if you allow a margin of error of a half second for the signal to get from the STOP button to the treadmill's CPU.

So, yeah, that was pretty awesome of me.

But it was very, very hard.  I wanted to just stop a whole bunch of times - until I got a mile from the finish and decided I just HAD to keep going.  I told  myself the first mile was easy, so why should the last mile be any different?

I am SUCH a liar.

But that's okay, I'm not that gullible and didn't fall for that crap.  The last mile sucked.

Actually the whole run sucked after the first half mile or so.  At one mile, the Klingon started having a party on my shoulder.  (By the way, I love the internet.  You want a picture of a Klingon in a party hat, type in a few words into the search engine, and bingo.)  Anyway, as the minutes passed, he started to invite his friends to join in, and they started attacking my body, piece by piece.  (Yes, yes, I know, those guys were not really his friends; they died before that first Klingon was even born).

The point is, I found that breathing - being able to breathe and catch my breath and continue on - was not a problem.  The problem was my hurting and tired body.  Which tells me . . . that I really hate running.

I am so excited to almost be done.  But I do not think I will run another 5k on Friday.  Maybe, but I doubt it.  Same goes for Tuesday.  We'll see.

Tonight's music:
1) Blues From a Gun - Jesus & Mary Chain (good start up song)
2) Head On - Jesus & Mary Chain (good second song)
3) Step On - Happy Mondays (always fun)
4) No Surrender - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (ideal for 6.4 mph pace, and the message came at the right time, as I wanted to quit right about then, but how can you when The Boss is saying "No retreat, baby, no surrender"?)
5) Badlands - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (eh, it was okay, I guess.  Hard to say because I was just miserable at this point)
6) Stand Here With Me - Creed (This song came on way too loud and was hurting my ears, but it's hard to fiddle with the iPod controls in my arm band when I am running.  Good song, though.)
7) Heaven - Live (I finished a minute before this song was over)

On the way home, I had that awful "runner's high" again.  I'm serious - I do NOT like that feeling of my brain rushing and my senses heightened and my nerves all jangly.  I've always preferred (medically speaking) narcotics to stimulants.  I hate caffeine (I make allowances for the trace amounts in chocolate).  I would rather be sleepy and relaxed than wakey and jittery.

Just one more reason why I hate running.