The Word ‘just’

It’s that time in the training when the participants always preface their mileage with the word ‘just’. This past Saturday, all they ran was ‘just’ eight miles or the ½ participants did ‘just’ six miles. I remember when these were their long runs! A few of them did comment on how the time has gone by so fast, even though we started in February and the weather hasn’t changed a lot!

I remember once when Grete Waitz ran the New York marathon with Fred LeBeow before he past away. She mentioned how difficult it was to run at a slower pace than she was accustomed to. Well, I spent my Saturday doing damage control tagging along with one of my participants for most of their long run. Since most of the team was doing shorter mileage, this participant had my undivided attention.

I swear that I was more fatigued from running a much slower pace over the course of seven miles than I would have been running at race pace!

Once again the weather in the high-five state for this weekend was crappy. We had rain, sunshine, wind gust and cooler temps in just the morning hours!