it really shouldn't be this hard...

"It really shouldn't be this hard..." I feel like this thought comes to mind far too often. Not quite every single time I run, but probably more than half of the time. During yesterday's 10 miler, it was practically my mantra. I was repeating in my head that often.

I met DV at RunTex and bullied him into running on the trail instead of doing the lollipop, but with the wrinkle that we ran from mile 0 to 10 instead from 10 to 0. It didn't take long before we both thinking, "Damn, I'm more sore than I thought from those 400s."

We made a quick stop at Mopac and I bumped into Mark Casey and Diana Damer. They're both in post-marathon mode, so who knows when we'll see them again. Diana thanked me for helping with the pacing at the marathon, and I told her it was fun for me too. I left kind of abruptly since it's rare that I have a running partner and I didn't want to piss him off. So, Mark and Diana, if you happen to read this, apologies for the rudeness.

Off we went again... Here's my token weather comment: It was crazy humid. In fact, I ditched my shirt at Mark Casey's car. It's only March and too warm for a shirt. Anyway, I think we were around a 7:30-7:40 pace, but with the construction on the north side, it's really hard to figure out. DV was testing out a footpod, but the results were a little erratic. (I'll let him comment on that sometime.)

Once we got to the east side, we picked it up, but just barely. I don't have the exact times due to stopwatch ineptitude, but I would guess we were 7:15-7:20. (Though based on how hard it seemed, it felt faster. See the title of this post...) DV suggested we try to get under 7:00 after we crossed the dam. As we sped up he commented that he felt better now. Well, not me. I can pretty vividly remember seeing the mile marker approaching and having to have a little conversation in my head to convince myself not to start walking. We finished up that mile in 6:28, which wasn't bad. Rather than stopping for water, we jogged the rest of the way back (total time for the run was about 1:16... nothing to get excited about), did a few strides and then I hurried home to watch the Arsenal/Aston Villa game.

A few years ago when we lived in Providence, I would occasionally watch soccer games with one of Meghal's class mates who happened to be a big Arsenal fan. I got hooked. OK, maybe hooked is something of an exaggeration, but I do try to watch a game once in a while. It's really easy to get into because the action is non-stop. The only time there is a pause if there is an injury or if it's halftime. No timeouts, no commercials, no referee reviews.

Anyway, on this day Arsenal was annoyingly anemic. They often blow lots of easy opportunities trying to be too fancy, but you know that they'll have so many of these opportunities that it's not a big deal to waste a few. It's not that they weren't creating opportunities in this game against Villa, but they never seemed in control and often even seemed on their heels. Still, they were only down 1-0 and towards the end of games, once the opponents' defense has tired from chasing around all those passes, they're often able to manufacture a goal. The last 10 minutes was all pressure from Arsenal, and finally at the very very last minute (3rd minute of stoppage time), they put one in. Pretty exciting.... Almost made it worth watching the previous 90 minutes of listless soccer.

Coming this week, a tempo run and 5K. All hypoxia all the time.