Fit-Coach: You can't calculate heart

While Kate was probably still winding down from her first VQ class, I was in bed early last night and was all butterfly-ish because my Boston training schedule called for an all-out mile early this morning. I had plugged my marathon PR into the McMillan calculator and knew that 6:22 was the split to shoot for. In the grey of dawn I jogged over to the gym (8 degrees, 0 degrees real-feel, in case you're interested...haha), warmed up for another 20 minutes and cranked up the treadie to the predicted pace. Twenty seconds in, my legs already felt trashed and I slowed the pace. And continued to slow it. And slow it. Ugh. I finished in 6:43. I know it's early in spring race training, but this was a disheartening reality-check.

Since September, I've gotten in the habit of sharing my training highs and lows with my coach, Adam Zucco. I feed off of his reaction to my performance (which is always honest, but also always motivating). Basically, he makes me feel accountable for my workouts, and I think that's a really good thing. (Especially when it's so dismal, cold and dark outside that I've found myself wondering more than a few times why I am even doing this!) So, I typed Adam an email as soon as I got home (yep, I'm a nerd) and I'm going to share his words in the hopes it inspires other winter workout warriors to keep going through the single digit days and tough workouts. "It is simply unrealistic to plan on always being top form early spring living in the city we do...you just have to roll with it a bit. Stay off the calculator sites. They don't calculate heart." I love that...even though I'm a lot further behind than I'd like to be, I'm not giving up. I'm keeping the heart. Posted by Liz

Photo grabbed from freefoto.com.