Need for speed

I really am no afternoon runner. My energy is at its highest half an hour after I've drunk my morning coffee, and then it slowly leaks out from my body during the day, until a few hours after midday when it reaches it's nadir and I start transforming into a zombie. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with food intake either. Today I ate a pretty big snack around 14.30, consisting of soya sausage and bread. Not the healthiest of snacks, and definitely not a favourite of mine (I hate most soya products, including sausage) but since I was planning on going running in the afternoon and eating dinner afterwards, I figured I had to eat enough to see me through those hours.

Big mistake. Whether it was the aforementioned energy dip or the soya sausages that my stomach still struggled to ingest three hours later, I don't know. But during the first kilometres of my run in the woods I felt heavy, my breathing laboured. I was really frustrated, because I had my Five Fingers on for the first time in over a month, and it's usually so easy to run in them. My legs feel so light when they don't have so much weight to carry, and my step is more technically correct, so I save a lot of energy. 

After a couple of kilometres, I met up with J, who had walked up to the woods to avoid running on tarmac. We started running together, and something strange happened. He pushed on, running up hills, increasing his speed on the flat parts, and suddenly I had to change gears. It was hard work, not like my usual jog-around-the-trail, listening-to-the-purty-birds-and-contemplating-life kind of pace.

I liked it. It wasn't hard enough to make me swear I'll never go running again, but it was hard enough to send my heart racing and endorphins rushing through my veins. I liked the challenge.

When I got home and looked at the splits data from my Garmin, I realised that this ”challenging” pace was not higher than my usual comfortable pace. At least the one I had before I got ill and missed almost three weeks of training. But now I got a taste of what it's like to push yourself with the help of others. Who knows. There might be an interval-loving runner in this little ultra turtle after all.