Elbow Sweat and One More Tenth of a Mile

I played collegiate soccer at William Smith College in upstate New York.  When I arrived on campus for preseason, I was a wide-eyed little ginger weighing a buck twelve and wearing these bright yellow sneakers.  We started out preseason with the fitness testing, which to be honest wasn't very difficult. I believe I told some of my fellow teammates, "I'm not so worried about the running, I'm more worried about the soccer part." Which, my teammates will attest to this, is the exact opposite of the majority of players trying out, but hey, I'm built to run.  At one point, I actually slowed up in one of the fitness tests to look around at my fellow teammates to make sure I was completing the test correctly because it was so easy.  In truth, I was completing it correctly, just finished well before any of my teammates.  Thus, from day one, I was known at the little freshman with yellow shoes that could run.  

   

But here is the catch... I'm a sprinter. I don't do distance.  A long run for me is four miles.  I prefer to hop on a treadmill, as stated in my earlier blog, and sprint as fast as I can for a few miles then call it a day.  I usually judge my sprinting workouts by the amount of sweat flying off my elbows on the treadmill.  One of my favorite treadmill activities is to run a warm up mile at level 8 (about a 7:30min/mile), then increase the speed by one level every tenth of a mile.  You run until you can't run any faster.  It's mind over matter, because in all reality you just have to run one more tenth of a mile. You can always run one more tenth of a mile. That's how my brain works. I'm a meathead when it comes to competition.  

Now, my mentality has to change from running just one more tenth of a mile, to, oh I don't know, just running 20 more miles to get to my 30 miler for the day.  And the distance isn't even the hardest part of my 100 miler training. Nope.  The hardest part is the fact that I have to train myself to run SLOW.  No matter how quickly I want to get done with my run, I have to have the mental toughness to keep the treadmill at a steady 7:30min/mile... and as we get further into our training, we will have to train to run 10:00min/miles.  Talk about painful.