Mojo, or Slo-Mo?

“You grab Mo, and I’ll grab Jo,” quipped Patty to Paulette and Gail on the “girlfriend run” Sunday.   I had just been accused of pushing the pace a tad too much, and responded by gleefully proclaiming that I had finally got my mojo back.  

Girlfriend runs are not supposed to be fast.  They are to be run at a pace leisurely enough to facilitate easy chatter, so we can all catch up with each other’s triumphs, disappointments, new shopping finds, and shhh….gossip.  Not the bad kind, the harmless fun kind.  Were your ears burning on Sunday?

But this day, I was energized.  I was back, and I felt like a penned filly just given free rein.  Two weeks prior, Rusty had us run a 1.5 mile time trial.  There’s no polite way to say this:  I sucked.  After a good strong period of building for the upcoming Carlsbad 5000 and a target 10K in May (Irvine…anyone want to come with?) and one of my best-ever track workouts, I’d fallen into a hole.  A nasty hole.  The work-stress, not-sleeping-well, I’m-tired-all-the-time, crabby-sucky-run kind of hole.  Plus, I caught a cold.  Duh.

I was supposed to run all out the first mile and try to hold it another 440 yards, and all I could manage was a pedestrian 6:55 pace.  True, it was on the dreaded “Rusty’s Loop,” our moniker for a rather tough little course he’s marked out that can whoop you when you’re down and hook you when you’re up.  But 6:55? For a measly 1.5 miles? Pah!  Even slower than my 10K in-shape pace.  Bleah.  Yuck.  Grrrr.  Drea’s TT did not go well, either, and Rusty spent the next 10 minutes exhorting us not to beat ourselves up.  ”Work stress always does this to you,” he reminded me.  ”You’ll come back.”

It always seems like a miracle, but I did.  After  a few more disappointing workouts, things started to pick up.  On Saturday, I had a much more successful 2-mile time trial on Mountain Drive.  After she ran her own very impressive 2-miler, Drea ran two beats behind me (one person’s cooldown is another’s time trial), a perfect shadow rocket-booster.  It’s odd, but I loathe having someone run right next to me when I feel like squat, trying to be helpful by urging me on:  ”Come on!  You can do it!”  I always have to stifle the urge to scream obscenities at them, sort of like what I’ve heard women in labor do to their feckless, well-meaning husbands.  Somehow, Drea intuited this, and ran smoothly just behind me, whooshing me along silently, with just a few well-chosen nudges:  ”You’re gaining on Kim, see if you can catch her,” and “Just one more little uphill, then down all the way.”  I punched in at 6:40 the first mile, and 6:45 at the finish.  Not my best ever, but Atalanta compared to the last one.  And no, I didn’t kill any suitors on Mountain Drive.

Tuesday track, we were to run a mile all out.  I was nervous.  Kim was doing a 2K, so I was on my own.  My best track mile ever was 6:24, run shortly before my PR marathon.  Rusty told me not to look at my watch, just run as hard as I could for a mile and he would call my splits.  He wouldn’t give me a target time.  I was thinking, 6:30 would be nice, and Kim later told me that’s what Rusty wanted to see.  ”OK, ready?”  Breathe.  ”Ready.”  My first lap felt conservative, but 93?  No way to hold that pace.  ”3:10!” he shouts the second lap.  Third lap, third lap, always the one that gets me…4:49, dang.  Turn it on, it’s only a quarter, don’t worry about the wheezing, remember the woman you passed at Carlsbad  who caught you and you let her go, legs are burning but that’s good, cheat and peek at my watch 6:02 with 100 meters to go, I can get under 6:30 for sure…6:25!

Rusty said 6:40’s were a realistic goal for Carlsbad on Sunday.  I was stoked.  Probably a little too stoked for the running gods, who don’t like it when you get too hubrissy, so they smote me with another cold that very evening.  I think they’re just pawing me, though, because it doesn’t seem very serious.  

I guess I’ll find out Sunday what it’ll be:  mojo or slo-mo?  Don’t tell the running gods, but if I can better my time of two years ago—20:44—I’m going to call it Flo-Jo.