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Freaking Focus Test

January 16, 2010 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
So my family is in Arizona, visiting my great-grandma which is sort of cool I guess- except Arizona is a big empty, desolate, desert. This of course means no scenery to keep a run interesting, dry air to torture the lungs, no company to keep me focused, and a greatgrandma to worry about me every minute of my run.
Therefore, I was having some serious self doubts about being able to get in any run at all, nonetheless a run well in the double digits.
Well, I knew I HAD to do it. "I can't give up on myself already" I said to myself knowing that I will be out of town for at least the last weekend of January, first weekend of February, all of Spring Break, and all of summer. Basically, I need to prove to myself that I canrun well on my own when I am out of town.
So, one o'clock in the afternoon, I say to myself "now is as good of a time as ever," and have my mom drive me out 12 miles (she ued the car's odometer). Well after she left me stranded and alone in the middle of a barren waste land, I decided to get to work.
I started very poorly, taking a while to work in to anything respectable, but it was flat and so naturally the pace picked up a little by little as I went.
About the pace I have 2 notes:
1- A complaint. I had no Ipod or anything to amuse myself. I therefore wrote poetry for a little bit, tried to solve world hunger for a little bit, and eventually settled in to singing a song I wrote with the catchy chorus "mile, after mile, after mile" and the even catchier verse "mile after mile after mile."
2- Farmer will probably never support this idea, but I now have more proof of its greatness: one way runs. In my example my mother drove me out, in our situation it would be a little more difficult though not impossible to work around. The reason it works so well is that it is SO EASY to inspire youself to pick up the pace. I mean, when you are running away from where you want to be, or simply for time, it is like "woohoo, yeah, this sucks." On the other handwhen you are running towards our destination it is always like, "well I could slow down, but then it would take longer to get back, and that's all I want to do, so I might as well speed up." Anyway, don't know how logical that all sounded. You may just have to trust me it is a very good idea.
Let me finish talking about my run. So, it started slow but picked up and I hit 6 miles comfortably. But it was becoming extremely hard to focus. I had to use all sorts of crazy things. I lied to myself about how much time was left many times (there were 20 minutes left for at least 30 minutes).
In any case I could go on and on about the struggles of putting in 12 miles in the middle of nowhere all by yourself, but really I do it for 2 reasons.
1- Part of the way I motivated myself was by picturing putting in such a great entry in to my running log and making it feel all heroic and excellent (which indeed to me it really was) so that
2- Everyone at home would
1- feel more pressured to run while they were on vacation and
2- know that I am putting in the work.
In any case, I am ecstatic that my run is over, and already dredding Monday's 10 miles... but maybe I will wait until I am in San Diego to do them...hmmm... not a bad and idea...and hmmm... way too many "..."'s in a scentence...