Emotionally Addicted

I woke up bright and early this morning and this time I did not listen to the little red devil on my shoulder suggesting I take a few more minutes to wake up on the couch! I noticed yesterday that missing the day of running put a cloud on my entire day. While I am definitely not addicted to waking up every morning by 5:15 am, I am at least emotionally addicted to running itself. Yesterday reminded me of this fact!

Despite my overtime on the couch and normal intake of morning caffeine, I was grumpy and irritable throughout the day yesterday and pretty sleepy as well. Someone came to my office yesterday and I was trying to explain how I don’t feel myself anymore when I’m not running. Today I ran 5.5 miles and I feel SOOO much better and more energetic than I did this same time yesterday! That probably doesn’t make sense to anyone but us runners!

It felt great to hit the track again today! I could tell my body was geared up for it as well. I warmed up for a 1/2 mile in about 4:45 and then did a 5-mile tempo run in 44:27. My goal was to average 9 min miles. I went a little slow the first mile and should have remembered that a 9 min/mile pace is not THAT comfortable for me! But I did okay the rest of the way and actually had my fastest mile for mile 5! Here were the splits:

Mile 1 -- 9:14
Mile 2 -- 8:52
Mile 3 -- 8:48
Mile 4 -- 8:53
Mile 5 -- 8:40

It may work out great that I will do my long run on Sunday this week. The weather forecast indicates a heavy chance of thunderstorms on Saturday that would have probably nixed my long run. There’s still a chance on Sunday but it is an isolated chance so hopefully I will be okay. I hope everyone has a great weekend! I will blog again Sunday to let you know how the 13.5 miler went!