Lightning Speed

In my last post I was talking about how I was having a hard time getting faster. After my workout yesterday I can tell you a different story. Here's my recipe to a new personal speed record:

Ingredients:

• A week full of dealing with the most ridiculous stupidities at work
• Wanting to leave on time on Friday to go exercise but having to work overtime because of ingredient no. 1
• Coming home on Friday just to realize that there's no time left for a workout before little brother comes for a visit
• Watching the husband getting serious on the indoor exercise bike
• A dark park
• A 7 km long distance to cover 
• Being hungry

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients together and lace up your running shoes. Get going thinking about how much easier your job could be if everybody else was properly doing theirs. Entering the park with really dim lighting and wondering about what some of the creepy looking people are doing there who are not walking their dogs or jogging. 

My Results:

• A 5:30 min/km pace as opposed to a 6:50/km pace
• Me panting like a dog
• Me wondering if I have been secretly slacking during all my prior workouts
• Me putting aside the worries about the job until next week

Competition

It's been well over two weeks since I resumed my training. I have worked out according to my schedule, have completed the hardest and longest work outs of the three month plan last week and I feel good about that. I haven't really talked about it a lot in this blog but my husband and I have picked up our triathlon training at the same time. In many ways this is a great constellation. We can train together, each of us understands that we have to make time everyday to exercise- in short: we share a hobby and goal. While I theoretically understand that women and men have different physical capabilities, it drives me nuts that my husband seems to be getting better at the sports much faster than I am. It is one thing that he is faster and stronger than me anyways, but what is frustrating to me is that he is shaving off time of his workouts all the time and I am not. We went swimming on Sunday and although we started learning the freestyle stroke together, he finishes his 1.5 km swim 7 minutes before me. Since I am somewhat competitive, you can imagine how much fun I have swimming my lanes while he's hanging out by the pool... I know we have completely different backgrounds as far as our athleticism goes, but come on! It's the same with the running and biking as well. Because he's getting faster so effortlessly, we don't do many runs together but every once in a while I'll get a "pity-run" where he goes my pace with me. He doesn't mind that but in my mind I am just obsessing about why I can't just go a little faster. I guess that the one good thing is that I try really hard to get better because I see his results. Sometimes I just wish my training partner would be another 29 year old women who just started exercising and is looking back on many years of childhood Ballett-lessons.