8 Mile

This is not to be confused with the 2002 rapper movie starring Eminem. Incidentally when I first heard about him I thought it was M&M....as in plain or peanut. Can you blame me? There's Vanilla Ice, 50 Cent, Poof or Puff Daddy, so M&M makes sense if you really think about it.

This is about my 8 mile Sunday run so there is really no comparison. Of course the Eminem movie had a run time of 110 minutes and my 8 miles spanned only 71 minutes so you could say I kicked his butt by 39 minutes. This is where I would toss in some rapper jargon if I knew any....

8 miles - so what. So it was a hurdle for me. The last time I was able to kick out 8 miles was July 2008. Humm, Eminem was a young rapper struggling with his life and I'm a "young" runner struggling with his pace. Maybe we should do lunch. You're right, a little more focus here - so let me get back to my point if I can find it. I'm a goal setter. I believe that if you don't set goals you'll never push yourself to the level of success you are capable of. Often we don't know what we are capable of so we settle. Or is it because we're afraid. I think fear plays a larger role than we think.

I'm a few weeks away from turning 50. It's just a number right? Sure. Then where did my hair go and why do my abs look like a pony keg instead of a six pack? You wash your face to get the dirt off only to find it's a liver spot. Should I floss if they're just going to fall out anyway? Really, 50 is not a big deal for me however I am focused on having a great 5K a couple days after my birthday. That's how I'm celebrating my big day - running. I'm not big on parties and as for drinking, take the cap off the beer and I'm half way gone.

In April the Bellevue 5K hill kicked my booty. It was clear that hill training had to creep back in to my training. Oh sweetness. A week ago I ran 6 miles with a couple hills and Sharon sold me on bumping it to 8. "You can do it"....."it's eeeasy". Ah, the words floated out so smooth that before I knew it I was committed. So 6 became 8 and 2 hills became 2 1/2. Actually it was better than I thought. Sharon is a good pacer and better yet she can talk. She is a very intelligent person - you know the kind that will use words that you have no idea what they mean but she's smiling so you smile back and nod your head. Inside you're thinking "what the hell did she just say." She did talk and in fact she told stories over the last hill and 2 miles which kept me from focusing on how far I had run.

We averaged a 9:00 pace and other than the 200 yard sprint we did at the end of the run, I might have been able to go a bit further. If I ran alone would I have pushed myself those extra two miles? Increased my confidence? Or would I have been afraid to go too far too fast? I'm glad I'll never know. I took a step forward. We should all take that step. So turn the light back off, spit out your binky, put on your shoes and get out there. It's time to run....