My performance at The Bear Run wasn’t anything special. My warm up was quick and I felt pretty good. The first mile was right on pace, but I was starting to feel tired. Even at the half way point I was still on pace for my goal. Then, I just really fell back and slowed down. When I finished I was about 30 seconds slower than my goal.

I sat down on the curb with a cup of water and took off my shoes. I sat there for a few minutes – a little disappointed but when I thought about I couldn’t expect much more with the amount of training I had been putting in. I realized I really needed to start running more and getting in more miles because I started the race well but didn’t have the endurance to keep it up.

My two options were basically to sit and feel sorry about it or to go run. I put on my shoes and got at it…no reason to wait until tomorrow. While running I started to add up how much I had run in the past week with my haphazard training…only 18 miles…less than 3 miles a day. How could I expect to run a race of 3.1 miles when I wasn’t even averaging about 2 and a half miles a day?

I ran 7 miles that day and resolved to get on a training plan. I had no accountabilty for my exercise. I was way too laxed and easily distracted. When I never wrote down my runs, I didn’t notice the lack of effort and resulting lack of progress.

Not any more! I’m up to 28 miles a week and I’m sticking with a plan, so I won’t have a repeat performance at my next race in June!

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got!”