The middle miles

Hi FitFooters! 👋🏼 👋🏽👋🏻

I raced a 5k yesterday.

My goal was to run under 18 minutes and ✅ (17:49, officially, I believe - yay!)

The whole experience was fun (fun being a relative term 😆), fast (again, a relative assessment 🔥), and surprisingly fascinating (to those of us who enjoy thinking about running and how to improve, etc. 🤔)

So “usually” running a great race happens because your pacing was very even (all miles are within a couple seconds of each other - nice and smooth) OR you somehow perform the wizardry that is negative splitting (last miles are faster than beginning miles - I may have successfully done this 3 times in the last 25 years of racing -VERY tricky to accomplish- hats off to those who do this on reg 🧢)

Neither of these scenarios happened yesterday. Not even close. 😂😅

Here are my splits for each mile of the 5k (pretty flat course, all on pavement or sidewalk, two hairpin turns, but overall gentle turns):

mile 1: 5:36.6

mile 2: 6:02.0

mile 3: 5:39.4

0.1: 33.3

If you aren’t familiar with mile paces, those numbers may look very foreign and not mean much, (which is totally fine - just stay with me - I will wrap this story up nicely in a second 🎁) but I would imagine most people would pause and ask “hmmm, what’s up with mile 2”?!?

Which is a totally fair question. There were no significant hills in the second mile, I didn’t stop to tie my shoe, I didn’t fall, I didn’t have to ford a stream or scale a wall. None of that.

I just hit a rough patch, let off the gas (pretty significantly, I must admit), and needed to collect myself and coach my brain to get it back together...

...which I successfully did and finished up the mission and it all turned out lovely. 🥰

(Ironically, my average pace was 5:45/5:46 per mile, but I didn‘t actually run any miles at that pace). 🤯

My point is this: oftentimes we are just in those “middle miles” of life.

We set goals or have a plan or work towards something, start off with lots of momentum and spunk (or with piss and vinegar as my coach likes to say) only to need to take a metaphorical nap in the middle and then regroup ourselves for the final push. 🛌

If that describes you at the moment, take heart.

You can be sort of a hot mess and have your plans change several times and still achieve the things that are important to you.

You may just need to take a deep breath and slow down to speed up.

Let me know if you need some great shoes to help you get through whatever mile of life you are currently in. I would be delighted to assist you. Life is more enjoyable with comfortable feet. 🦶🏿 🦶🏾🦶🏽🦶🏼🦶🏻

Personalized socially distanced shoe fittings available for this week! Email me at sudasfitfoot@gmail.com to set up an appointment!

(Remember to always bring snacks ⬆️ )

Stay well, FitFooters!

:) Betsy