Groove

At ease. At will. In control. In the driver's seat. There is a certain feeling when you are feeling in full flow and master of your destiny, relatively speaking. Some aspects of the life might have this more often than not; for other aspects it could be temporary. Work for me at times feels like that. Cooking once did, too. It's always nice when one side of life has gone a little awry that something else is humming.

Work in this case has been a lot of work, to the point that it wakes me up. It is, on some days, so much work that it keeps me from noticing I haven't eaten, or from remembering that I already have. There is a lot to do. At least running is there to keep me sane.

And it wasn't long ago that I was paranoidly doubting my recovery from surgery and now I feel once more, relatively speaking, on track and at ease. Every week I have runs which match in part the best of last year. This morning my mind stirred at 4:22am. I tried to return to sleep but thoughts got to me first and so I'm upped it, geared up and outed the door. Yesterday morning I'd had an intensive run so I initially had planned to go easy, but by the time I'd finished the second kilometre I turned onto the motorway cycleway and I just felt good. I increased my pace to just under what I'd run my last marathon at. It was a stiff pace but I felt like I could maintain it, and then I turned onto the undulation of Mt Albert Road.

Mt Albert Road and Remuera Road both represent the toughest regular roads to run in Auckland. They just don't let you take it easy. The downhills don't feel down while the hills inclines hit you one after the other. But this morning they didn't bother me. In fact I sustained the same speed despite the hills. Then when they ease I sped up further to run the next three kilometres faster than I had run the Coatesville Half marathon two weeks ago. Then I sped up further to run two kilometres faster than any of the mile intervals I had run yesterday morning.

And then I slowed down to a cool down jog to take me home.

All the pace was instrumental - without going fast I would have been late home. I'd miscalculated how long the route was to be and realised three quarters of the way through that I'd have to pick up the pace anyway. But the fact is that I could. At will. At comparative ease.

Two and a half more weeks remain before the Maraetai Half Marathon. Six and a half till the Waterfront Half Marathon and nine and a half till the Rotorua Marathon (my earliest marathon in a year ever). Things are in the groove and I'm feeling rather confident that my training is triggering all the right changes and a few little habits are really helping progress things.

Now about work...