Eureka, that's how they are faster than me

The past couple months have been really eye opening for me as a runner. People that have been running their whole lives have probably figured a lot of this out, but for me things are just clicking lately. I still have a lot to learn about running. Anyhow, as I was driving home from the Charlevoix Half Marathon is when it really hit me. I ran that race differently than my others. I actually really enjoyed the race! I didn't run it to the point I felt like I was going to keel over, but rather fast enough to keep the pace the whole time and enough energy to kick it up for the last 4 miles. The whole time I was thinking this is what running ought to feel like.

You see I have always hated running fast. You know running to the point you feel like you're going to puke fast. I just always assumed the fast runners just were tougher than me and got better tolerating that I want to die feeling. And yes, there probably is a little bit of that, but after my Charlevoix race I realized I don't think that's their secret trick. I mean who would keep running mile after mile after mile if running only made them feel like puking? Then I came home and was watching a video clip on my facebook page of a fast runner running her marathon. Things clicked a little more. She did not look like she wanted to keel over and die. She didn't look like she was gasping for air. She didn't look tired. She didn't look ill. In fact, she made it look easy. She looked like she was having fun! Wow! The thing is I think that's the trick. Not that it was easy for her. I'm sure that it wasn't, but this whole time I've had everything ass backwards.

I shouldn't be running harder and harder and harder trying to convince my body that feeling like death is easy. Their trick is that they are FASTER when it is EASY. I mean I don't know why I didn't see that sooner, but their easy is way faster than my easy. Their slow is my fast. So my new goal for the year is to get faster for my easy runs. I am still doing speedwork and working with my coach. I would still like to see my faster get faster and work on tolerating running faster better, but I even more than that I want to see is my easy pace to increase. I figure when running gets easier is when I will get faster. Anyhow, that's my brilliant insight for the day. Not even sure this totally made sense, but it made sense to me so that's what matters.