Strange New Tuesdays

Today is the first Tuesday since I finished my running class . . . I'm not sure how I feel about this. I really enjoyed my running class and found that it did, in fact, make me faster, more confident, and a stronger runner overall. In addition, it was a nice way to get good, quality miles in early in the week. That said, it was sort of a pain to completely lose each Tuesday night to class, and getting down to the UES was sort of difficult as well.

There is another session of the class starting up again today and I thought about joining it, but I just couldn't do it. If I thought it was not easy to get down to class on Tuesdays during the summer, I'm SURE that I'd struggle even more during the school year (which begins far too soon for my tastes). Also, despite the fact that I enjoyed class while I was there each week, I sort of dreaded going to class in the hours leading up to it . . . I don't know why. Thus I didn't join, figuring I'd keep running as I had been, getting my mileage in and just focusing on the marathon.

Today, however, I'm beginning to wonder whether not taking the class for another session was a mistake. I'm glad that I can be more flexible with my time and I know that getting to the UES each Tuesday after work would have me in fits, but I'm concerned that I'll get slower now that I don't have a group to push me through hill workouts, tempo runs, intervals, etc.

So with that in mind, I decided to try to push myself today for my four miler. I ran something of a tempo run, getting four miles done in 30:43 (or 7:41s). Not too bad, just about 20 seconds/mile slower than my PR for the four mile race. I'm going to continue to try to make Tuesdays my "speed" workout days, maybe getting some intervals in, maybe some hills too. We'll see.

Oh and we're inside 14 weeks!