I love running. Don't get me wrong, but to get out there and actually run it takes an extreme mental push out the door for me. Perhaps because second to running, I love being lazy. (Third is baking, but that is a whole different blog). Me, the couch, a movie, what could be better? Luckily the running beats laziness most days, even on a day like today when the frost has set in, I am still shivering from my morning child drop off and even the first cup of coffee has not warmed me up. And it is only about -1deg C. (30deg F). This is only the start of winter.
So to increase my motivation, I turned to my trusty and new toy, my GPS running watch. It saved me in the woods yesterday, so maybe it could get me out the door today. I remembered that it has a virtual partner feature that lets you run against your own data from a previous run. So I set out to race myself in a standard 8,78km lap I frequently do. Its a nice, easy 70% paved route with some nice woods at the end. I must admit my enthusiasm for this new watch has not lead me to read the whole manual, just to go out and play with it, so I was kind of shooting in the dark. I clicked around until I chose "run course" and went with it. At the beginning I was not exactly sure which fields were which and if I was actually beating myself, but after a while I got the hang of it and tried to increase the distance between myself and me a week ago. Kind of eerie, kind of fun to think that there is a ghostly doppelganger from the past running right behind you. Halloween is past, so I tried to not let it freak me out during this middle-of-nowhere run. My work paid off and I beat myself by a whole 45 seconds. OK, but I thought I was running faster. I see how this can get you to put a little extra hustle in your step.
Saturday and Sunday I am most likely running after little ones vs. running the trails, so until Monday. Maybe I will race my today self!
Check out my GPS data for today.
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