I amazed myself tonight.

I had run clinic tonight as I do every Thursday night. I spent most of the day with a knot in my stomach.  The big ugly monster of self doubt reared it's ugly head this morning as I was getting ready for work.  Tonight in run clinic, for the first time ever, we were running for longer than 5 minutes, we ran 4 minutes last week, and tonight we had 8 minutes on the schedule.

I didn't think I could do it, I really wasn't sure.  I was doubting myself and not for the first time I had thoughts of "who did I think I was kidding?"  "you can't do this"  "you won't be able to do this"

I got more and more nervous as the day went on, and when we were driving home, I told my friend "J" (who is an awesome runner, and a huge influence on me and my running) that I was nervous.  That I wasn't sure if I could do it.  She scoffed at me and told me I'd do fine.  That I had nothing to worry about.   I was still worried though.  I wasn't sure and that big dose of self doubt was weighing heavily on my mind as I got changed and headed out to run clinic.

I was a little early as I wanted to talk to my run leader and ask his opinion on next week's clinic, should I take it easy or go hard with the group seeing as how my big 8K race is next weekend.  We decided that I'll go to clinic and play it by ear.

When it was time to head out for our run, one of the other ladies commented that she was nervous for tonight's run and instantly I felt better.  I told her that we could do it.  Did we think in January we would be doing this?  Off we headed for our run.  We always walk to the top of the road and then start our warm up 1:1's which I always just leave as the warm up on my watch but for some reason tonight I hit the lap button on my watch which started our 8:2 intervals so I stopped my watch and just went with Jason's for the warm up.  Once we started our 8:2's I waited a few seconds and then started my watch back up.

This where it got to be amazing!  I did it!  I ran for 8 full minutes,  non stop, no walking, no stalling, i ran for the full duration.  I didn't want to walk, I didn't want to stop.  I was so happy!  When we finished our first interval of 8 minutes running, I really wasn't all that far behind everyone and when I met up with them it was high 5's all around. 

Then it happened again, I ran for another 8 minutes straight.  No stopping, no pausing, no wanting to stop.  I was a little further behind on the 2nd interval but we still met up fairly quickly, and the group said that they didn't have to back track all that far.

Then I did it again!  I ran for another 8 minutes.  I did have about a 30 second stoppage when a car backed out of his driveway without stopping.  I stopped and waited for him to pull all the way out before I crossed the drive way.  That put me a little further behind but I did manage to catch up to them and they were still in sight by the end of the interval.  We then did 2:1x2 and then walked about a block for a cool down back to the store.

My pace on my watch isn't really accurate for the start or for the middle, but here's my splits for tonight's run.  http://connect.garmin.com/splits/486568103

I am still riding that awesome feeling I get when I'm done running, that tremendous sense of accomplishment.  Tonight though, I did truly amaze myself with what I'm accomplishing, what I'm doing, and how far I've come.