Why am I a Slow Runner?

It is early June, so I headed out to work wearing short sleeves this morning and it was 56 degrees out, with a brisk wind that made it feel colder than that!  And tonight's low is 47!! 47 degrees, in June!  Maybe this is normal for Ohio weather, but not for me who is used to Texas weather.  It is going to warm up to be just beautiful tomorrow, but I am not exactly used to having to wear a jacket when I leave in the morning, in June!

I am feeling lots better and am glad I didn't end up running yesterday.  I am planning on running today but I haven't decided what exactly to do.  I could my intervals I have on plan for today or make up the long run I missed due to being sick.  I want to do the long run, but I don't want to push my body too far when I am still in some what of a recovery phase.  I plan on running my first interval at my "easy" pace and seeing how I feel after that.  If I feel like I have 3.5ish more miles in me, I'll keep going, if not I'll take a break and do some more intervals at a slightly higher speed.

The first night of a summer women's bible study is happening tonight and I am rather excited.  I love the other women at my church and enjoy getting to spend time with them.  Even better, my best friend at church who I haven't really gotten to see much lately is going to be there!

So what exactly do I mean by calling myself a slow runner.  I mean that I don't run fast (Hello, Captain Obvious!).  I will never win any races or break any records.  The fastest I can run is at about a 10:00 per mile pace, which I can only hold for a few minutes before I die.  My standard pace is about a 12:30 mile and my "hard but I can hold it" pace is about a 12:00 mile.  In fact, the main reason I cannot see myself running a marathon at this point is that it would take so.........very.........long.........to.........finish.  It would take me over 5 and probably closer to 6 hours just to get done and that is waaaay longer than I want to spend running.

My passing vs. being passed at my last 5K and my calculated race time for a Marathon based on it.

I am content with my running speed and, while I would love to get faster, I am perfectly ok with where I am.  I am faster than when I started running and I am fast enough that I feel fairly confident I can finish almost any race I enter within the given time limit.  Running slowly is so much less stressful than I feel like being a faster runner would be.  I feel that if I were faster, I would worry more about my times and paces and it would take some of the joy out of just running.  I can enjoy the beauty of a race and can stop to take pictures without it having a big impact on my time.  There is so much less pressure towards the middle and back of the pack and for now that is where you can find me.