On Running Another Year

First Published: 2023 April 13

Draft 1

Last time that I mused about running, I talked about the Doctoral Degree Dash that I did last summer. In it, I ran further than I thought I could.¹

Since then, I’ve tried running off and on. Lately I’ve been more off than on, but even when I try, I find that I can only really run around a mile in the indoor track I’m using before I lose the ability to keep going.

This week has been shockingly warm here, and it’s made me want to get outside and run. So, tonight I decided to run while praying a rosary,² to see if that could help motivate me to run longer.

In total, I ended up running just under three miles. I think that there were likely N causes to that.³

First, I actually felt like the distance measurement was accurate. When I run on the indoor track, it claims that 6.6 laps equal a mile, but my watch seems to think it’s closer to eight.

Second, the constant variety in an outdoor run as compared to indoors. When I run on the track, I’m running in a small loop over and over, so it’s harder to want to keep going. On the other hand, when I run outside, especially in the latter half of the run, the faster I go, the sooner I get home.

Third, I actually did something with my mind to stop me from thinking about how miserable it is to run.⁴

I found out my watch now gives me a lot of statistics about my runs. For instance, my heart rate basically never dropped below 175 while I ran, which is an incredibly high feeling number. My pace also seems to be fairly well correlated to my stride length, which makes sense to me. When I get tired my steps certainly get shorter.

Anyways, I just thought it was interesting how different it feels to run outside than inside. I’m hoping to get in better physical shape this summer, but summer kind of starts now.