Today’s run was a little better than Monday’s. 5.3 mph vs 5.2 mph, so when I say a little better, that's what I mean. However, I ran nearly all the first two miles without any sort of walk break, and only needed maybe a 30 second walk before I headed into and finished the third mile. When I finished the 5K, I was more exhausted than I usually am, but in just a couple minutes I felt great. Warmed down with the walk home and some stretches and Wii Fit-taught yoga poses.
I warmed up, however, with the "100-Up" exercise that I read about in a NYT article about barefoot running (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/running-christopher-mcdougall.html?_r=1). The goal here is to get you out of running shoes and into a more natural gait where you land on your forefoot instead of your heel, with less energy lost to impact and more toward forward momentum.
While the exercise was a good warm up, I find it almost impossible to use that gait while running, perhaps because I am still wearing the running shoes, and the shoe has its own idea of the proper gait (this is, after all, why there are running shoes). I have tried a couple of times, and I move MUCH faster, but I also get exhausted sooner.
This is the difference between running and jogging, which is what I do.
I can see a threshold in front of me, where, while running, I think about the motion and the music instead of the course and where I can sneak in a few seconds of walking. I can't cross it yet, but I can see it. Once through it, I should be able to work further on speed.
For the first time since my first 5K run several weeks ago, my legs hurt. This is a good thing. I'm finally beginning to push up against my current limitations.
