Thursday, July 31, 2008

Fun times on the tempo run

Last night I had a 35min progressive tempo run after a 1h ride and when I started the run my legs were feeling pretty heavy... They just didnt have any 'pop'. I eventually worked my way into a decent pace but it was certainly nothing special. Additionally I was running through a neighborhood I run through fairly frequently and just didnt have any motivation to really push the pace. However, with about 15 minutes to go I came out of the neighborhood and into a rather large strip mall parking lot. Within the span of a couple of minutes, I had a few incidences which, got me going a bit and provided some entertainment for the rest of the workout.

First, a guy yelled, "Get after it, son!" out the window of his truck. I'm sure he was mocking me but ironically it was a nice little bit of motivation. Next up was a "nice legs" comment from a group of middle school girls. (Incidentally, Target is apparently the new hangout for middle schoolers. It seems every time I run by there is a group loitering outside.) Finally, I passed by a Cold Stone and caught a whiff of the scent of freshly cooked waffle cones emanating from inside. Soooo yummy. For whatever reason, the short distractions provided a bit of mental break and made it a lot easiery to really push it for the last 10 minutes or so without too much trouble. In the end it was still a pretty tough workout but at least I had some entertainment along the way.

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