slow but happy

I dreamt last night that I walked a marathon, and that it went smoothly and without histronics. I started slow, I built speed, and as I came off the St. Johns Bridge, I was fresh and rarin' to go. I came to the wall, acknowledged it, then went on through. My body was made to do this.

I know where this came from. Among other things, I had just such a pleasant, relaxing evening with my sweetie. He was happy, I was happy. I read my blogs as usual, and I was happy and amazed that Marshall was feeling great after his 50 miler -- how impressive is that? I wanna be like him when I grow up!

Richard from Running Towards Fitness talked about the need for doing long slow distance running to build up aerobic capacity. That in turn made me think about Stu Mittleman's Slow Burn which I haven't finished, and I should probably give more thought to.

So this morning at the gym, I did my upperbody workout, and then hit the treadmill, set very slow. As usual, my ego is my worst enemy. My ego wants me to prove how fast and strong I am--hey, I'm fat, but look at what I can do. My ego does not want to go slow. I have to remind myself that no one is paying attention to me, and even if they are, who cares? It's all the usual suspects at the gym when I'm there, all obsessively caught up in their own workout, or a magazine or both.

I've been warned that it takes 6 weeks to see significant change, and 20 or more to get to where I need to be. I have the time to fix this, if I start now. --Richard

6 weeks would mean I should see some improvement for a January marathon. Damn!