Setting Goals & Achieving Them: I Can Do That??!

After being a lazy bum the rest of Sunday and yesterday after work, I was more than ready for today's run. The extent of my activeness yesterday consisted of 35 minutes of "Yoga for Stress Relief."  Yoga for stress relief really just = stretching and laying on the mat.  And lots of breathing with your eyes closed.  Don't get me wrong I love me some yoga every now and then, but doing yoga in the middle of my bedroom floor just doesn't get me excited like a good run does.

Ready to run!

Today was one of those runs where everything just clicked and the miles flew by.  It was SO nice out when I got home from work (30 degrees...I'll take what I can get these days) and I still had about 1.5 hours of sunshine left.  That meant I started AND ended my run in sunshine.  As much as I love my reflective gear, we were definitely due for a little time off from each other.  

The END of my run - hello daylight!

Four miles were on the schedule for today so I decided to run my fave 4 mile loop (again).  Thankfully I haven't worn that route out yet!  Today I was one of those runners that looks at their garmin every 33 seconds.  I wanted to keep my average pace right around 12 minutes and more importantly I wanted to pace myself so my splits weren't all over the place.

As you've probably noticed, I'm REALLY bad at pacing myself or even keeping any sort of consistent pace for that matter.  I'll clock one mile in at 11:20 and the next at 12:40 and the next at 12:00.  My legs have no rhyme to their reason and I usually just go with it.

Welllll since I didn't have Emily with me today to push my pace, I decided to try and keep my miles as consistent as I could and to negative split each mile.  That meant a LOT of glances at garmin and a lot of "wow, this pace is faster than I thought and feels awesome!" and "holy sh!t i'm going this slow?! But it feels so fast!"  

Since I'm so NOT a Type A kinda runner, it was a pretty cool and a welcome change to be so aware of my pace and to adjust accordingly so it was where I needed it to be.  Obviously I liked when it was fast and I had to pump the brakes.  Not so much when I was hovering over 12 and needed to speed up.  Overall, mission sub-12 minute miles was accomplished:

Average pace 11:30 - win!

Not only did I succeed at keeping my pace under 12 minutes, but I had negative splits for all but my first mile.  I blame my music playlist for not letting my legs go slower during mile one... what are the odds that your most favorite pump up songs will all play right in a row during your first mile??

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	47:55.7	4.17	11:30
1	11:31.5	1.00	11:31
2	11:56.0	1.00	11:56
3	11:41.6	1.00	11:42
4	11:08.8	1.00	11:09
5	1:37.8	0.17	9:46

Two goals achieved in one run??  Who the heck am I?!  I don't do goals, I don't do tough runs.  I don't like to push myself.  Turns out doing those things is more fun and rewarding than I gave them credit for.  Who knew.  Don't worry, I'm not gonna go all crazy Type A runner, but it's a nice switch up from my normal Phoebe philosophy on running (please tell me you've seen that episode of Friends when Phoebe runs...if not you should probably to go youtube it right now).