F@%k you, Lance Armstrong

For my birthday last year, my very thoughtful husband gave me a very cool gift: a Nike+ iPod adaptor and a gift certificate for Nike+ running shoes. It’s basically a special adaptor that fits into your iPod Nano and your running shoe, and it tracks your training. It allows you to set different run lengths (you can choose distance, time or number of calories you want to burn) and it saves the data from every run for you to upload online.

It’s a fantastic little tool that has helped me immensely. When I go for a run, I set it to either the time or distance I want. A woman’s voice comes on from time to time to tell you how you’re doing so you don’t have to constantly keep your eyes on your iPod. For instance, when I’m doing a 29 minute run, this chick comes on and says things like “You’ve completed five minutes,” or “two minutes remaining.” At the end of the run, she comes on and says, “Congratulations. You’ve completed your goal of…”

So what’s Lance Armstrong got to do with it? Well, to backtrack a little, last Wednesday, I decided to do a “practice” 5K run. I would set the iPod to the 5K distance and run the whole thing without stopping to see if I’ve improved my time at all on the 5K. (My record is 29:39).

Off I went on the run. At the end of the 5K, the usual gal came on and said, “Congratulations. You’ve made it to your goal of running five kilometers. To end the workout…” I quickly checked my time, and it was wretched! It was 32:40!!!! I was incredibly disappointed with myself.

But I barely had time to register my disappointment when another voice came on. “This is Lance Armstrong,” the voice said. “Congratulations. You’ve just run a personal best mile at [and now I can’t remember the time, but it was somewhere in the 10 minute range].” (I didn’t use my iPod for my best run, which is why the time isn’t in there.)

Yeah, f@%k you, Lance Armstrong. I thought. Sure, you can run a marathon in 2 hours, but do you have to completely mock me?! I seem to recall hearing something a few years ago about Lance Armstrong working with Nike while he was training for the New York City marathon, but it sure took me by surprise!

But there’s a lesson to be learned in Lance’s words. I think it’s that I’m just not trying hard enough. I seem to assume that just getting out for a run – no matter how slowly I run – will magically improve my time. It won’t.

So now I’m kicking up my training a notch. I have less than a month until my race, so I plan to do at least one 5K “practice” run a week. This week, I’ll do that run on Thursday. I’m also going to push myself a bit harder while running. One thing I’m doing is playing with my speed. At certain intervals (probably between lampposts), I’m going to run as fast as I can. I did that at last night’s run, and it already improved my time. I ran about 4 ½ kilometers in 29 minutes, and that’s including doing 10-and-1s. If nothing else, I need to be more aware of how quickly (or, rather, how slowly) I’m running.

Training this week is again a bit strange with our busy schedule, but I ran last night, and I’ll be running outside both Wednesday and Thursday this week. Today was the usual Tuesday muscle class, and I’ll go to spinning on Friday.

Yesterday, I got my first copy of the Running Room magazine, and I have to say, I found it inspiring. I read tales of marathon runners who started running in their late 60s! If they can do it, I can certainly manage to run a marathon before I’m 35.

Happy trails…