Last Thursday, in Nashville, I ran 10 miles on a bike path with mile markers. Curious about pace, I took a few mile splits in the middle: 7:20, 7:20, 7:20.
This afternoon I ran 8 miles -- 8 figure-eight loops -- at a park in New Jersey. 6:38, 6:38, 6:38.
And yet the effort level for both workouts was the same. When you are trying to put in decent volume and doing it alone and aiming for something many months away, you must simply learn to accept that some days your "normal" effort will produce 6:38s when on other days it might only produce 7:20s. It's not about training at an exact pace; it's about training within the correct zone of effort. You want to settle into an intuitive cadence that will provide a certain amount of stimulus but also allow you to recovery prior to more-important workouts. What is "easy" and what is "hard" will naturally vary from day to day.
Last Thursday I was up at 3:30 a.m. for a 6 a.m. flight. The weather that afternoon was hot. I felt sluggish. I was worried about the half marathon in two days.
Today the weather was clear and cool. The dirt trail was easy on my body. The second 8-miler turned out to be smoother than my first one in the morning.
Tomorrow morning I might feel lousy.
But the important thing is consistency. Steadiness. Day after day, you put in the work.
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