Changing Seasons!?

I think I'm being outrun.

Ted, Dave, and I ran in Valley Forge over the weekend. We are gearing up for the Revolutionary Run on the 22nd, and decided to run the trails in the park, just to get an idea to what the course may be like (after comparing the map, and what we ran, I don't think we followed the course at all). Dave pulled away pretty early, like he always does (the kid is a machine, I tell you). Ted pulled away shortly after and I never could catch him.

That's when I came to the realization just how much maintenance my body needs to keep a certain fitness level. Ted can do one short run between long runs and be good to go. I need at least two, one of which occurs within 48 hours of the other. I was proud of where he's gotten...far way from the days last summer of complaining and whining after two miles. I was proud, had a sense of ownership, and encouraged him.

And I was annoyed.

Then I was annoyed that I was annoyed. I was jealous that he could do that, I was ashamed that I couldn't, I was nostalgic for the days that I could, and I wanted desperately to be up there with him.

Which made me decide that I needed to step it up, that Ted had raised the bar and I was going to need to work a bit harder to be on his level.

However, there is one small difficulty to doing this. Being a creature of habit, I fall very quickly into a routine and have trouble breaking this. My routine? Running in the evenings and sleeping in the mornings. That is why Monday morning's alarm clock was met with a reset, and the un-spring-like temperatures didn't help (to keep with today's entry title, I think seasons are slowly changing and in the future we'll be swimming on Christmas and the Aussies down under will be building the snowmen).

Last night Ted and I ran a short, easy 4-miler. We didn't eat before we ran, just came home from work and left. I had a great run. Ted's was shaky. He kept the pace good, but he said he was sore and felt tired through it. And I realized how different our running styles are. I've gotten accustomed to running at night, but my body still responds best to not eating much before a run, where Ted seems to do best running within a few hours after eating a meal.

So maybe I'm not being outrun after all. Maybe I've just discovered how our bodies respond differently, and what we each need to do separately to have the best run together. And we're both realizing that what works for him to run, doesn't work for me, and vice versa.

Or maybe I just need to wait and see how the runs this week and the weekend work for us.