I had a good swim at the lake this evening.  It was long, and included lots of hard intervals, but I had the lake almost to myself and the weather was perfect.  The thing is, I almost didn’t leave home for this swim…

Early this morning, before work, I had a tempo run session, that comprised of a 20 minute warm up, 30 minutes of hard tempo running and a 10 minute cool down.  I ran out of  my neighborhood to the local High School, so I could do the tempo interval on relatively flat ground.

The twenty minute warm up run was miserable.  I felt tired and mentally drained.  A thousand thoughts went through my mind..

• Why am I doing all this training, when I don’t even have a race until next spring?
• Why am I being so selfish, spending hours away from my family to train?
• Why don’t I do the right thing, and finish all those jobs and chores that need doing around the house?
• Why am I always eating at strange times of the day?  Shouldn’t I eat dinner at a normal time and eat it with my wife?  Why do I always make her wait to eat with me after I train?
• Am I getting too old for all this?
• Do I really have to drive all the way to the lake for a miserable swim tonight?

Honestly, I was very emotional and almost in tears. I was close to just quitting.

Then my watch pinged at me; it was time to start the tempo interval, and like a robot, that is what I did.   Now my thoughts switched to “this sucks”.  Years of run experience however, told me that tempo running often sucks for a short while, until you get into a steady state rhythm.

I still had many thoughts racing through my mind as I pushed through the tempo interval. Gradually, I started to feel better.  Within a minute or two of starting to feel better, I realized I was getting a ‘runner’s high’.  This is a real effect, caused by your body being stimulated through the release of endorphins and endocannabinoids.  These are chemicals that your body produces and they literally induce a feeling of being ‘high’.  As I continued to run, I could almost feel the blood coursing through my veins.  It was exhilarating.

I rarely get a runner’s high, during a run.  When it happens, it’s usually just after I finish my run.  I think it was almost fate, that gave me the high, during my run today.  It happened when I most needed it, and it completely snapped me out of my funk.  I finished the run happy, had a great day, and as mentioned above, I went to lake and swam.

My motivation to workout, and finish this huge training block, is back.  It was definitely ‘saved by a runner’s high’.