Pent Up Athlete

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The beach, São Vicente - this is the 3.5 to 8.5 km stretch of my run, turning back at the foot of the two apartment blocks in the middle of the picture. At night I run along the silver line where the sea laps onto the shore

12 km 

59:21 / 4:57 pace 

17C nighttime beach run, 16 kph wind  


I got home tonight at 10:00 PM after taking two hours to drive 87 km from the University of São Paulo. Every time I drive to or from São Paulo I am forced to confront the failure of Brazil up close. It is a broken country but no one seems to mind much. No one except me. It drives me crazy and when I got home I was in two minds. I was tired and fed up and I have an early start in the morning, but I also really did not want to skip a day's training. I knew that if I did, the anxiety would probably keep me awake all night anyway, so I decided to go out and see what happened. 

 I promise not to drag this on any longer, but the traffic light fell for me. You know what that means: an extra boost of positive energy. When the first kilometer came in at 5.10 I knew I could go for a longer and faster run than the 8 km minimum I had been toying with as I started out. I read somewhere that distance running officially starts at 8 km. I'm pretty sure that there is no real reason for that, but it stuck in my memory and now I tend to see anything under 8 km as short of proper distance. This is stupid, I know. I have done a lot of 5 km runs that have pushed me to my absolute limits and I've done dozens of 8 km-plus runs that were about as stressful as crossing the street. But anyway, I had been thinking about running out 4 km and turning back, claiming the shortest distance run I could and then going to bed satisfied. 

 That changed when I saw 5:10 for the first kilometer. I immediately added that to the traffic light boost and set my mind on a quick-ish 12 km, remembering that I had run my fastest 12 km training run for a long time, on asphalt, the night before. This was to be about 75% sand. 

 And it went brilliantly. I was tired and fed up, my left Achilles was and is very sore, it was 10.30 at might and very windy - and the day after a tougher run than normal. That's why I am especially pleased with the overall pace of 4:57 I finished in. It would have been 4:55, I am sure, but the traffic light didn't help me out on the way back. Just keeping me on my toes, I guess. 

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