Fear of failure can sometimes help. I'm struggling to come to terms with a decreasing, um, work capacity. That is, my perceived exertion is the same, but performance - time, reps, weight, distance, etc - is reduced. I assume that if I keep up my PE, I'll continue to have the same physical benefit from a workout, but I'm a competitor and I like to see my numbers improve. My first response -- at least mentally -- is avoidance of things I might not be so good at any more, because I hate to fail. (Have you seen reports of chin-ups lately? Nope...)
So, I planned my workout today through a haze of mental negotiations. Eventually, and luckily, I ended up taking the bull by the horns. I mapped a mile within a 5K loop, and decided to run it for time. Full disclosure: I made sure the route for the mile was primarily (er, totally) downhill. In all fairness, this did bite me in the ass when I had to eventually ascend the fairly substantial hill for the last 500m of the run. (And the whole 2nd half was slightly uphill.)
Because of/thanks to my hill-cheating, I was premature in my conclusion that my sub-7 days were behind me, for the time being:
Mile: 6:45
5K total: 24:45
Perspective: If I'd run that in the National Capital 5K race, I'd have come in about 7th of 390 in my category (women 30-34), 123/3819 women, and 515/6367 total. Not SO bad.
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