The thirty minute rule

I could not tell you how many runs I've started, feeling absolutely terrible, and then soon after thrown in the towel. I started off on such a run this morning, legs absolutely trashed and just feeling dreadful. Within five minutes, the little voice was telling me to stop. I was sorely tempted, but in the end managed to compel myself to keep going, purely because I really didn't want to have to do a make-up run in the evening. So I kept running, starting my hill repeats after the 15 minute warmup. The first couple were pure torture. If my legs had been shouting at me on the flat, they were now screaming with all the oxygen molecules that they were able to spare from their mitochondria. But a strange thing happened after that. Round about the thirty minute mark, I started to feel better. Not a whole lot better, but good enough that I knew I'd be able to finish the workout. And sure enough, I did. It was tough, but it felt great to have gotten it done.

So from now on, I'm going to follow the thirty minute rule. I might feel crap at the start, but I nearly always do on my AM runs. If I'm still feeling bad after 30 minutes though, then I will not hesitate in calling it quits. There's always the hope I'll feel better in a few hours. And conversely, on some runs, I might feel good at the start, but the thirty minute rule advises me to not get too smug until I've hit the thirty minute mark. Last night for instance, I started out on a run feeling pretty good. So good, in fact, that I was hitting 4:00/k with almost no effort. It felt great, absolutely stupendous. I was imagining all the training PBs I was about to break. But then, after about 25 minutes, I began to feel the wheels coming off. My legs were starting to complain and I was finding the pace a little more difficult than it was before. I could've kept going at that breakthrough pace, there's no question in my mind about that. But in the end, I decided it wasn't worth it. It would've cost me mental energy, creating a hard workout out of an easy run, and would've left me tired and sore for today's workout (which it did anyway:P).