My faith at my second training race

Tania said try two training races before my big goal race.  I blogged about my first, so it seems like I should share a bit about this one.  It felt much better.

At my first training 5 K, I ran it in 28.42 and it was not a positive experience.  I did not believe that my body would be responsive to all the training, everyone was so fast and I seemed to be slower than most. I found it a bit demoralizing really.

Tania has been providing me with speed training designed to simulate a race environment, and also gave me the dialogue that goes with it that should be going on in my head during the race. The speed training is tough for me and it pushes me to go at a pace I am not sure is healthy in aged and overweight women, but I am out there doing it.  It involves running for 6 minutes at a race pace (for me that is around 6.00 per k) and then walking or jogging between each interval.  I do this 6 times.  For the most recent speed work out she reduced the number of 6 minute intervals to 4 and then I was to push it even faster and do 4x 2 minutes with a 4 minute rest between.  Even with the walking between, I did almost 10K in 60 minutes.

So with a few more speed workouts under my belt since the last training 5 k race three weeks ago, I went into this race feeling much more confident in my ability and curious to see if the speed training would improve my time.

The course was tougher with more uphills and it was a rainy cold day, so it was not the ideal conditions of the first race.  My mental conversation was more positive and I did not get discouraged by people passing me.  In the end, I improve my time by 30 seconds in just 3 weeks of speed training.  Amazing.

I now believe that I can get faster – its just a matter of putting in the time and getting fitter.  My faith in my own ability to achieve has kicked in.  Ain’t that a powerful thing.  Now its just a matter of putting the time in to achieve my goal.

I can hear Tania, all the way from Toronto saying, “Its about time.  I thought she never would get it.”  I guess I am slow in more than one way.