Endurance vs Speed

I decided to take a step back and re-evaluate what I want with my running. I enjoy doing 5Ks and mud runs and little activities that make me push myself but what I want most during these activities is to last through the whole thing. I would love to be able to run a full 5K straight through. Once I am able to do something like that, I will then focus on my speed and improve my time. With this in mind, I went running last Tuesday (since my professor lets us out late, I may not be able to do body pump on these days anymore), and was able to run a mile and a half without stopping. Even when I stopped to take a break and walk, I only did so because I wanted to cool down before going inside. Since my days are so long now, I cannot do 3 mile runs as often because of the time it takes up that I now lack. I was stoked about the distance. It was a very slow run and I probably averaged a 12-13 mile but I didn't let that bother me because I need to keep my main goal in focus now. On Friday I woke up early to do another quick 2 mile run and, this time, I was able to go 1.75 miles! I thought, "oh I will be at 2 miles in no time."

Tonight, I went with Kale and we ran about 1.5 miles and most of that is up-hill and by far the most difficult part. After we got to a corner before turning, we had to stop for a couple seconds to drink some water. After maybe 7 seconds of stopping, we continued on for about another mile. Besides that 7 seconds or so, we ran almost 2.5 miles. I couldn't believe it. I felt fantastic and I tried to keep my breath steady the whole time and not make myself sick or anything too intense. It was just a steady, nice, cool run. Absolutely perfect.

I believe that by Nov 6th, I will be able to run my whole 5K. I don't think I mentioned that before but there is another 5K in Redlands on that date that I would like to sign up for. So that is my newest goal- run the whole 5K without stopping. I will not worry too much about my time, but I am thinking that if I am able to run at a slow speed, that I still may beat my first time of 37 minutes and 37 seconds. Even if I don't though, I will still be able to say that I ran the whole thing and that alone will be amazing.