Never gets easier

When you're going through a little crisis of confidence, it's always nice to turn an amazing workout that restores your faith in your fitness, and lets you know everything is going according to plan. That's not quite what happened to me today.

It's not that I had a bad run, far from it. But I wasn't flying along like I was two weeks ago. My first lap was almost exactly the same, but I lost over a minute on the second. There are a few reasons this might happen:

1. Last time was at the end of a rest week, this was after two weeks of the hardest speed work I've done in years. Fatigue may play into it a bit.
2. There was a very significant wind coming out of the north this morning. I was putting little effort into the opening southbound leg, and I covered that stretch 13 seconds faster than the other day, so that means I lost 81 seconds over the next 4.3 miles. There's one stretch almost a mile long where I was dead into the wind, and it was like running uphill.
3. I was definitely holding tight to an easier pace on the hardest climbs. My plan of 4-4 breathing held the entire way, and trying to maintain that on these tough climbs (some into the wind) required a very short stride. I could easily see losing 15-20 seconds per climb just from that.
4. It was a bit warmer out than they said it was, and I was overdressed. It may not have been singlet and short weather, but it wasn't long-sleeve shirt, wind jacket, wind pants and toque weather either.

I get a rest week for the next few days, and with the holiday weekend, I think I'm going to switch up my 10 miler on Sunday. It's supposed to be all flat work, but I think I'll head out for two hill loops, so I can compare to some of last year's runs. That will either be a big confidence boost, and the cold, hard slap of reality, which may be useful too.

Run: 8.4 miles, 24:51/40:28