It was hard. Like really F-ing hard. I thought I might do 6 miles for the effort part of the run, but would be satisfied with 5.

My goal was to stay around 6:40-6:45. Since I hung right around 7:00 for my long run with Marathon Pace work last week, I thought this was a realistic, yet challenging goal.

I did a faster than normal warm up because I was itching to get it going and was working with limited time.  I got to mile 2 and tried to wrap my head around the entirety of the run and holding onto the pace I was running for so long.

Mile 1– 6:44

Mile 2– 6:37

Mile 3– 6:50

Mile 4- 6:40

Mile 5- 6:45

Let me break it down for you. Of course mile one was fine. It’s when you try to settle in to what you think you can handle for the run. Biggest mistake you can make is going out too fast. I was a little nervous this was too fast when the 6:44 popped up. Maybe I should have been more conservative with 6:50.

So naturally I sped up. No, bad move at mile 2!

Reality check at mile 3, I was majorly struggling and considering calling it a day and doing a re-do workout on Thursday this week. Those quick three wouldn’t tire me enough that I couldn’t go for it again. I pushed through that mile to get a solid 5K in at least. Then the mile rolled over and I kept pushing. I worked REALLY hard for those last two miles. Of course I thought of just getting to four, but when I hit 3.5 knew I could hold on until mile 4 and just do ONE MORE mile. Because after all, you can do anything for a mile- am I right?! I’m not usually one to even consider cutting a workout short, but this day I was battling hard.

Lot’s of grunting, ugly faces, but best of all determination in that last mile. I was verbally talking to myself out loud somewhere between 65th & 75th on the monon. “JUST GO”

I made a decision. I knew this workout would be tough from start to finish. My legs did not feel fresh. I did plyometric lunges and some other basic strength stuff I had been slacking on on Sunday and naturally my legs fret tired from that. And whether I like to think it or not, they might have still been a little tired from the marathon pace work on Friday’s long run.

I’m not saying you should do a workout on overtired legs. I’m a big believer and hanging it up and doing the workout when your body is ready for the workout if you need to, BUT my body could in fact handle this workout yesterday- I just had to have my head in the game. And I chose to do that. I think on fresh legs and on the right day this workout wouldn’t have been such a beast. But if we only did workouts on days like that, we wouldn’t be preparing ourselves for mile 22 of the marathon or mile 10 of the half (or whatever you are training for).

I know what I am physically capable of right now. Sometimes the bigger question is what are you mentally capable of. Don’t be afraid to work hard. 

Work Works.

Family post tempo recovery run later in the afternoon yesterday:

The post Tempo Mental Strength appeared first on Lindsey Hein.

So today I warmed up 15 minutes, ran 30 minutes hardish and cooled down for 40 minutes. I started out the 30 minutes at 6:53 pace and realized it was too fast 5 minutes in. Bummer. But I quickly reminded myself, you can’t jump right back to where you were. I took it down two notches to 7:03 and held that until the last 10 minutes where I sped up to 6:58 and then back to 6:53 for the last 5 minutes. It felt good. The effort was there but it wasn’t out of control. Lot’s of smiles, deep breaths, good music, some singing (hopefully just mouthing words) & a good book. If I was doing an interval workout, I wouldn’t read during my on sets, but this pace was controlled enough that I was able to read. I’m reading Rob Lowe’s book – Stories I only tell my friends, it’s pretty good. Don’t ask me why I’m reading it, picked it out to be a mindless entertaining read and it’s doing the job. Pretty interesting too- he was one driven kid trying to break into acting.

As I was running and throughly enjoying the endorphins the hard work was providing me, I thought a lot about being content where I am right now. Stop comparing things to where I was, where I want to be and to whatever everyone else is doing. I think this is something we need to wake up every morning and remind ourselves of depending on our circumstances. Back in December, I was running 10 mile days 4 days a week and was loving it. Now is not the time for it. One 10 mile day plus a long run with some shorties mixed in is where I’m at this week and that’s just fine.

I think I’ll run the Hoosier Half this weekend– I want to get 20 miles in on Saturday and I’ll sandwich the race in between the 20. I’ll push myself during the race, but I’m not sure what that will produce and honestly it doesn’t matter. I’m just going to be in the moment. Enjoy it for what it is, no thinking about what I could be doing or have the potential to do. I am where I am NOW. Working hard feels good no matter where your current shape is.

 So completely irrelevant to the running, I thought I throw in some of my favorite pics from this past week: 

Family pic at my parents house. I wanted to take a picture since we were wearing clothes that weren’t workout clothes. We had a major fail trying to get Marshall in the picture, so just let him do his thing and it turned out pretty good anyway:

Marshal and Cadence. Besties, or so Marshall thinks:

Twins and let’s just note that this kid ALWAYS has a ball in hand:

And this is one I love. The neighbor kids who I mentioned in my last post came over yesterday and played basketball in the front yard, while I enjoyed the sun & although they didn’t realize it, they were highly entertaining to Marshall and gave me a nice break. Gonna miss this house and neighborhood.

That’s all! 

What do you do to stay content right where you are? 

What’s your favorite part of a hard run? (My answer: Endorphins)

The post Being content where you are. appeared first on Lindsey Hein.

Here is the stupid truth: 6 days into my return, I did a tempo run. (felt good to work hard, but bad idea)

I hadn’t planned on doing the tempo run, I knew I shouldn’t do it. But I was in a rotten mood. I was mad and running fast made me feel good. It worked for my mood that day, but it pissed my right hamstring off. I had no business doing any sort of running that quick. It was a 60 minute run, with 30 minutes at tempo (6:44-6:49 pace.) In my normal shape, that kind of pace for 30 minutes feels like work, but not hard work. This run felt like hard work after 5 minutes and days following the bad mood was still gone, but had moved to my hamstring. No running for 3 weeks, that quicker leg turn over with the longer strides, I wasn’t ready for it.

Learn from me. If I wanted to run it out a little harder to get rid of stress, bad mood, whatever, I should have hopped on the bike or the elliptical and done some harder efforts on them. I would NEVER have one of the runners we coach to do a tempo run like that after a break. Yet I subjected myself to it for a stupid reason. Maybe next time if a normal paced run doesn’t work to relieve a bad mood, I’ll schedule an extra vodka grapefruit instead of running too fast too soon.

My Boston training plan has been a plan in motion since way back when I returned to running after surgery number 1. I built myself up nicely between that surgery and the second, with a great quality 20 miler and some speed work that put me close to where I was last spring and over the summer.  I peaked my weekly mileage out at 60 a couple of times and things were looking up.

Now, here I am 6 weeks out from the race and taking another week off because I (think) I pulled my hamstring all because of a bad mood. No quality speed work since January pre-surgery and I’m not going to try it anytime soon coming back form this hamstring thing.

I’m not really sure where this leaves the race.  It’s frustrating to think it’s been a whole year (this coming weekend it will be a year from when I ran my marathon PR at Shamrock). Part of my wants to do what I did last year and use Boston as my “Rehoboth Beach” race. Use it to negative split, running totally controlled with no goal in mind for a PR. A confidence boosting race, that reminds me that I am in CONTROL of what I want my body to run. The only issue with that- is if you’ve ever run Boston, (in my opinion at least) it’s really hard to run a slower pace at the start for two reasons- EVERYONE around you is rolling out fast and there are so many downhills, your body naturally just goes quicker. (Your quads paying for it later) I had originally planned to do a lot of my training runs down in Bloomington- which I still have a decent amount of time to do, if I’m back to running this weekend.

My plan though will be to run MY race. Don’t get hung up on who’s running faster than me or what other people are doing. (you know we all do that) I’m running the race I’m capable of and I’m gonna be smart about what I do. Hopefully I will make it fun for Glenn or whoever else decides to track me- to see the pace start out conservative and slowly pick up. (I’ll be thinking about that at mile 20- when their is an audience, you somehow care more…. or you hurt so bad you think F this, I don’t care I just want to finish)

At least I’ll be a lot smarter than when I ran Boston in 2009. I really can’t believe it’s been that long- I’m a completely different runner now and have learned so much in those five years. Look at the babies in the picture post first Boston. Little did we know, Glenn was going to decide to get fast and three years later we’d be back for him to run it, me with Marshall in utero.

Boston 2009

Boston 2012 (See Marshall in there? I was 7 months pregnant here)

Now- let’s look on the bright side. I got to waller in bed later this weekend and not concern myself with the normal “I have to do a Saturday morning long run.” While I know my attitude and mood would probably be happier had I got a long run in for the day (that’s 75% of the reason I do it week after week, for real), it was nice to just chill. I can’t wrap my head around choosing to not run long most weekends, because it’s what addicted runners do. After my break this weekend (and my other many breaks I’ve recently had post surgery), I think I’ll start giving myself a weekend every 3-4 weeks where I just don’t run long. A break weekend.

Have you ever had a hamstring pull? Best advice?

Someone scold me for doing what I knew I shouldn’t do!

Do you struggle with comparing what you’re running pace wise with what everyone else is doing?

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