Okay, am no longer going to be worried about my speed. In fact, what I really need to focus on is keeping a slow, consistent (read: sustainable) pace. From now until the end of the year or so, I’ll be running on Mondays and Wednesdays alone. Kristina has class at 8:30 on those days, so instead of both of us getting up really early, I’ll just get up at 6:45 like every other morning and go alone. The problem here is that without someone to talk to, I have a hard time judging my pace (the conversational test works quite well for me, but I’m not about to start talking to the squirrels in the park, thank you.) At least until I get a heart rate monitor. And I know that the bulk of my marathon training will be alone (Kristina did agree to do the shorter weekday runs with me, but the long weekend runs are all me) so I have to figure this out. I’m hoping it’ll be easier with a heart rate monitor. Nice, solid numbers.

All in all, though I was disappointed with this morning’s run, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I overslept this morning. (I have my alarm clock set to NPR, and this morning all I got was some clicky noises that didn’t wake me up. Generally, I prefer waking up to the newscasters voices, but occasionally, the alarm will go off while they’re relating some particularly bad news, which, after I hit the snooze button, I incorporate into a dream. Like once, there was a shooting somewhere. That was unpleasant. But anyway, off the subject. My alarm didn’t go off.)

So anyway, I overslept until 7:15, didn’t get to the park until 7:30, and finished my half hour at 8 on the dot, which is getting late, as I have to be at work at 9. Otherwise, I would have gone around the park twice, and felt better about the whole mess. Oh yeah, it was a mess because I ran 10 minutes, walked a minute or so, ran 5 minutes, walked a few minutes, ran a few minutes, walked a few minutes. I know I can run 30 minutes. Heck, I know I can run 40 minutes! So why can I not do it alone? Arrrgh! I know it’s all in my mind. Must work on that.