Stinker

I love strawberries so very much!  They are my favorite food.  I grew up in the heart of strawberry country and was blessed with almost 22 years of the finest, juiciest, reddest, ripest, berries around. Moving to Colorado was a shocking experience for several reasons (snow from September to June????), but the produce aisle probably shocked me the most.  I had taken for granted all the years of fresh from the farm food.  It is probably not shocking that my decision to move back California coincided with the beginning of strawberry season.  I went to the store, bought some "strawberries," and then decided that this was not the place for me (then I met my husband and decided I could live with "strawberries").

As much as I love strawberries, occasionally you get a bad one.  On the whole I love them, on the whole they are good, but every once in awhile you just get one that's a stinker.  And I feel the same about running.  On the whole I love to run, on the whole my runs are good, but every once in awhile you have one that's just a stinker.

Yesterday was one of those stinker runs.  I ran my normal loop and from the get go it was a struggle.  I was tired, my muscles were sore, I am still feeling a little under the weather, and my head wasn't in the game.  And guess what, my Garmin picked up on that.  I looked down and saw how slow I was going.  So I picked up the pace, looked down, and saw I was going even slower.  What the??  So I tried to speed up.  Nope, still slow.  Slow, slow, slow!  When it was all said and done I was two minutes slower than normal but just as tired.  A stinker.

It happens.  I think runners love to talk about their great runs and their PR's, but the thing is that sometimes you are off.  I also think it is important to remember that these bad runs happen to everyone, and they don't mean much in the larger scheme of things.  Just because I was slow yesterday doesn't mean I am regressing, it just means I had a bad run.  My whole body was tired and I knew that I just needed a break from running.

So today I hit the pool.  I gave my legs a little break from pounding the pavement and I am hoping the next time I run it will be lots better.  Now I think I will go eat some strawberries.