W2D3

Yesterday was W2D3. As with Wednesday, I was breathing pretty hard at the end of each 90 second jogging interval. In fact, at the end of the 4th interval, I started to feel a little light-headed. During the 5th interval, I almost stopped at 60 seconds.

At that point I was feeling rather frustrated and, knowing that I have to do three minute intervals next week, I was afraid I was going to have to repeat week two. So I decided to test myself and see just how long I could go if I didn't have my mind fixed on 90 seconds. So I set my timer to three minutes and started out with a slow, steady pace. Surprisingly, I did the full three minutes, and could have kept going.

I learned a couple things from this. First, mindset has a great deal to do with performance. As long as my mind is fixed on 90 seconds, that will be my limit. That's apparently why 60 seconds seemed exactly right last week and 90 seemed exactly right this week. That's what I set my mind to, so that's what I was able to do.

Second, probably due to my mindset, my pace has probably been too fast. When I set out to do three minutes, I deliberately set a slow pace. I got into a rhythm and my breathing never got too heavy. At the end of the three minutes, it was still about the same as at the beginning.

It's good that I did that three minute test yesterday because I now have the confidence that I need to move on next week. Not to mention the fact that it just felt great to be able to run for three minutes without having to walk. That may be the longest I've run at one time since I did the 5k "fun run" in 7th grade.