Safety in Numbers

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My 16 km run this afternoon along the Santos beach. I noticed the rockabilly profile of the island of Santos for the first time today. 






16 km

1:23:22 / 5mins 12 secs per km

23C, overcast afternoon



I planned to go long and slow today. Long, it was, at 16 km (or ten miles, more of which in a minute), but I don't claim this is a slow pace, not for me. It’s medium, I’d say, at least for now. I set out thinking I would do at least 16 km at 5.30 pace – that is, five minutes thirty seconds per kilometer. After two kilometers I decided that 5.30 was too slow, but longer than 16 km would not be on, mainly because I have work to do tonight. So, I thought about 5.20 pace. Then it struck me that 16 km might be too far at that pace. It was then that I decided to look at it as a 10-mile run, rather than 16 km.

And so it was. Every 1.6 km / mile I mentally chalked off 10% of the run and, before I knew it, I was at 80% (12.8km / 8 miles) and feeling fine. In the last four days I have run 50 km (10km, two x 12km and today’s 16 km) and those two 12k runs had felt tough right at the very end. So I had tricked myself into feeling different about the distance.

Maybe. I don't know for sure because there are days when you just run better or worse and you don't really know why. I like to think it was my brilliant strategy of thinking in miles instead of kilometers, breaking up big stuff into smaller, more manageable stuff. Of course, the temperature helped a lot. Maybe the wind direction, too. The moon?

It’s all a balancing act.  That’s the thing – or one of countless things I have to manage on a run. A bad run can really take its toll. By ‘bad run,’ I mean something that ends up below my expectations. Falling below a target pace or distance is a setback that can take a while to get over, mentally. If it hits my motivation, it’s bad – because motivation comes entirely from myself and is all I have. There is no one else here to pick me up. This creates a problem when I am setting targets – are they too easy, to avoid any demotivating experiences? It’s no good being highly motivated but slow. That’s not what I am doing here.

I try not to play it safe and I think this run could be used in evidence if I had to prove that, which I don't and never will – but it’s just the way I have to see things, considering I do this alone. My average heart rate this run was 131 beats per minute – about 77% of my maximum. That means it was an easy run, and it felt easy, I have to say. But that’s not playing it safe, because – as I said – this was my 50th kilometer in four days and I need to watch for injuries from overtraining.


Tomorrow will be short, just to be on the safe side. Unless I change my mind after a couple of kilometers, or miles.

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