Although I planned these ‘easy’ runs to allow me to travel at ridiculously low speeds, I find that even when I just barely slog along at what I think is a pitiful speed, I don’t even go anywhere near as slowly as I had budgeted for myself to go, so that’s very cool.  These easy runs feel very easy and they don’t take as long as I thought they were going to.

I toddled off today, headed for my favorite College Street pedestrian bridge and I had gone about a mile and a half before I was even really aware of any distance accruing.  I hit the bridge at about 2 miles and cached one of my two bottles of water I brought along.  Eventually, I would find out that one bottle would have been more than enough.  I didn’t ever even open the second bottle.

I waved to people on the freeway, as I always do.  I don’t know why I do that, but it’s fun, I guess.  Someone did beep and wave back today, which rarely happens, so that made it even more fun.  I kept on slogging along and hit 3 miles in no time at all.  I hung a U-turn in a shopping mall parking lot and started heading back home.

I got back to my bridge rather quickly and had that little treat again, and then it was just on towards home.  After the bridge, there were only about 2 miles left and that’s about the first time that the mileage seemed to slow down somewhat.

I looked at my watch when there were about 1.5 miles left, and 1.3, and 1.2, and 1 and then that was starting to get ridiculous, so I started trying to look away for longer periods of time.  However, I know I looked at around .95, then .9, then .85, then .8, which was definately not an improvement, so I tried to at least look away for a tenth of a mile by choosing an object in the distance to shoot for before looking.  I did make it to .75 that way, then .65 and then I think I may have even made it to .5, but then I was just looking at it constantly again.

I realized that I would finish my 6 miles about .10 away from my house and I started to become curious what my 10k time would be, so I decided I’d actually run 6.22 miles to get a 5k time.  Once I accepted that I just added .22 to my run, I was able to look away from my watch a little bit more, but as I approached 6 miles, and then all the way ’till 6.22, I looked at it alot because, of course, I wanted to stop it right at 6.22.

My 10k time was 1:07:53, which was more than respectable, seeings how I wasn’t really even trying.  Had I run that way in the recent New Times 10k, I would have come in -  2340th of 2861 total runners or 228th out of 292 women in my age division.  That’s really not too bad for not even trying!  What if I really had been trying?