The Brain is Definitely in Charge

In my nearly four years of running, I'm continually amazed at the lengths that the human body can be pushed to. With appropriate training, we are pretty much capable of anything we set our minds to. And that's really the key point. It's whatever the mind wants.

Now sure, you can have those days where you just don't physically have it. No matter how many positive Jedi mind tricks you throw out there, your body just laughs at you. But the overwhelming majority of time - at least in my case - the brain is clearly in charge. I've lost track over the number of times where I've told myself that I was going to run a certain distance, certain length of time, or just run until I pass that house, mailbox, etc., and immediately as soon as I reach the goal I started out with, my body just completely shuts down.

Tonight was one of those nights. I set out with the plan to run 45 minutes, which I figured I should cover 8km. I started out feeling a bit cold (run temp was somewhere around 25 degrees F) and took about 1km to warm up. Once warm, however, my 2-5km were great and I felt that I might push for a 10k. My 6th km was a bit rough, but I really felt that I pushed through the wall as I cruised through 7k. As I started to approach my 8th k, things just fell apart - my legs felt heavy, my lungs burned and I pretty much mentally checked out. As I reached the spot where I figured I would be at 8k, I checked my Garmin to find that I was only at 7.7km! Those last 300 meters were some of the longest and most painful I have done in quite a while! How could I have been feeling great just 5 minutes earlier?

Oh well, I still banged out an 8k run, in just over 45 minutes, which I'll take any day.

For those interested, here's my run log from my Garmin: January 6, 2011 - 8km by ndkl at Garmin Connect - Details