I have lately resigned myself to the fact that I am just a 7 and a half minute per km runner. I've come to terms with that after months of trying to improve it only to discover that I gas out if I deviate from my normal pace. The way I look at it i am ok with this because of the fact that my only real objective here is to get my heart rate up and keep it up for around an hour. If I push any harder this activity that I don't really mind doing will become something that I hate doing and then I simply wont do it.
I always advise people to find an activity that they don't hate because they will be far more likely to stick with it than if they dread putting their running shoes on. This doesn't mean that exercise has to be pure enjoyment, but it just needs to be something that you don't hate.
I wouldn't say that I "like running" but I don't hate it, especially when once it starts to hurt I will slow down or even walk but I never stop moving entirely. I also don't really push myself because I am not training for an upcoming race. It isn't necessary for me.
The idea behind most of my runs is to go an hour and normally this ends up being around 7km. Some days I don't have it in me to even go that far but I try.
There is one thing that I notice about the ends of my runs though and this always ends up being true and it has to be a purely psychosomatic thing: I always find a burst of speed considerably faster than the rest of most of my run just at the end.
Like a lot of people, I tend to start out faster than I should. I am trying to work on this because it just makes me gas out faster and since the objective here is for me to go for around an hour, burning myself out in the first 2 km is a terrible idea. I almost have this under control as you can tell by my split times here.
Something that kind of amuses me happens almost every time I go for a jog though and that is once the finish line is in sight, I accidentally find a burst of speed that is normally a great deal faster than the other km's that I have already done.
I'm about at 7:30 per km person but in that last 700 meters where I knew I was close to my house, I suddenly seriously picked up the pace. This is after I struggled on the previous 2 km's and to me this is an interesting phenomenon. Maybe jogging is in fact more of a mind game than I had previously though and the notion of being nearly finished is something that many other people that exercise experience as well in cardio.
It has been many years since I engaged in any sort of formal race involving anything but I do recall that during a triathlon that I would find some energy just at the end of the race that I thought didn't exist. Of course there was an audience in those situations so it was a bit different. When I am just running in my city there is no audience so it just must be that "finish line" mentality that exists with me at all times whether anyone is watching or not.
Do any of you out there experience this during your runs?