Open Letter to Myself

Dear Bill, Ok, your 2 years plus into running and you struggled with a simple 5 mile run. Maybe, you should reconsider this whole running thing. Seriously, at 2.5 miles in you hit a wall...are you kidding me. Your heart felt like it was going to explode, your legs felt like cinder blocks, and you were sweatin like a sinner in church. Speaking of sweating, your running at 8pm at night and it's at least 96 degrees and 50% humidity....you're not very smart. Wouldn't you much rather be at home on the couch watching the Olympics? Again I ask, "Why are you doing this?" I write this as reminder to myself that not every run is magical. As a matter of a fact, I seem to remember this exact same feeling around this time last year. Summer running during monsoon season in AZ....SUCKS! It makes you question your ability, your heart rate skyrockets cuz it's trying twice as hard to cool your body in the humidity. "Why do you do this?" Well you do this because you LOVE IT. You do this because you couldn't when you were younger. You do this because it's easy to find an excuse not to, but harder to drag your ass out that door. You do this because of the friends you've met along the way. You do this because not everyone experiences the sunrises and sunsets you've seen in the past 2+ years. You do this because not that many people can or will or want to. You do this because you can, and you know that for every crappy run there are 2-3 AWESOME runs. Push through, cooler weather will be here soon! Activity Route: -- Elev. Avg: 1407 ft Location: Paradise Valley, AZ Elev. Gain: +0 ft Date: 08/11/08 Up/Downhill: [+59/-59] Time: 08:53 PM Difficulty: 2.1 / 5.0 Performance Distance: 5.00 miles Time: 0:46:00 Speed: 6.5 mph Pace: 9' 12 /mi Heart Rate: 158 bpm (Avg) Calories: 755 174 bpm (Peak) Map   Elevation (ft)   Pace (min/mile)   Heart Rate (bpm)   Heart Rate Zones Zone Range (bpm) Time In Zone Distance In Zone Zone 5 169 - 188 0h 09m 20%  1.25 mi Zone 4 150 - 169 0h 30m 65%  3.18 mi Zone 3 132 - 150 0h 10m 22%  1.07 mi Zone 2 113 - 132 0h 01m 2%  0.08 mi Zone 1 94 - 113 0h 00m 0%  0.02 mi (none) out of range 0h 00m 0%  0.02 mi Splits Mile Pace (min/mile) Speed (mph) Heart Rate Elev Gain actual +/- avg actual +/- avg 1 9' 16 +0' 04 6.5 -0.1 140 -19 ft 2 9' 06 -0' 06 6.6 +0.1 155 -16 ft 3 9' 05 -0' 07 6.6 +0.1 162 +3 ft 4 10' 06 +0' 54 5.9 -0.6 164 +7 ft 5 8' 17 -0' 55 7.2 +0.7 167 +16 ft end 9' 43 +0' 31 6.2 -0.4 169 +9 ft Versus average of 9' 12 min/mile

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