Reality

The past week or so of running hasn't been particularly good. I was sick with a cold and fever for about four days but now am back to almost normal. The biggest development in my running life has been the acquisition of a Garmin 305. This is a very "sophisticated" running watch that has GPS capabilities. In short, it tells you exactly how far you are going and how fast. It makes the fantacizing runner face reality. I can no longer call that 9.2 mile run, ten miles. I now know that it is 9.213 exactly. I can no longer fool myself into believing that I am training at 7 min. pace. I have been slapped in the face with the proof of global positioning sattelites that I am training slowly. Really slowly. So slowly that I don't even want to write how slowly. On the other hand it is incredibly hilly where I live. Many of my runs start with a mile or so of uphill running. But no more excuses, rationalizations. I face that I am running slowly. Of course that doesn't mean that I will start training faster, it just means that I will have to run farther to make sure i am actually running the distances I thought I was running. So actually that is a good thing for me.