You run four times a week, every week. It’s familiar, right? So you can decide on any given day whether to run slower or faster, right? Well, it doesn’t work that way.
Sunday’s jog was like punching through molasses, horrid and slow from the beginning. The next day seemed no different but when Strava gave me the first kilometer split, I realized I was travelling fast, very fast for me. Off I went. This morning, running early after a rainy night, I felt just as good as two days ago, and anticipated a similarly sweet Strava call, but no, I was slow again. A different slow – hey, I felt fine – but slow indeed. The three days’ average paces (minutes/km) were 6:21, 6:11 and 6:22. We’re talking a difference of 300 meters!
So . . . if you’re an athlete, I guess you can fine tune fast or slow days. For the bulk of us thudding around the streets, running remains a mystery. The best you can do, it seems to me, is to take the slow days with the fast.