Peaks and Valleys

I don't know if it was the good weather, the good out look on running or just the company I was with but half way through the workout today I realized how much I LOVE running.Which I am SO happy to be saying!
That may seem weird to you as we all LOVE this sport......when it is treating you well.

Let me take you back to October. Running was going so great. Workouts, races and everything about running had been so amazing to me. I went into the 10k champs thinking I was in way over my head and came away with a 41 second pr. It was awesome. I came home had a good week of training and bam. I got sick, workouts were awful and than for the first time since I started running I had two AWFUL races in a row. First the Turkey Trot and than XC club nationals. Than as runners do, my head took over and I couldn't do anything. Distraught my coaches and training partners kept telling me. "This is part of the process. You have to have valleys it can not all be peaks" Being the stubborn person I am all I heard was "BLAH BLAH BLAH" Keep in mind in the 18 months I had been training I had nothing but Peaks, I would PR in almost every race. It kept me hungry for more so I had NO idea how to deal with this valley. I tried everything. Massage, solo workouts, eating better, rolling, stretching anything I could think of that I may be missing. Until I came to the conclusion all I could do was take a week off. Not my normal week "off" of 60-70 easy miles but a whole week off. Which really scared me as I already wasn't getting in good workouts and after the week off I would only have 3 weeks until my second ever half. Tired, mad and without any other options I took the week off, ate a lot of junk food and to my surprise when I came back from that off week things seemed to start clicking again. It felt amazing to go fast again and more important to not feel like I was going to die doing it.
Lets fast forward back to now. I have had two months of really great workouts and things have been amazing (We are just going to completely forget about that little thing I did at the Air Force :) ) I have finally gotten smarter in workouts and have learned each interval should be faster than the last. Instead of my old philosophy of as fast as I can on number one and than hold on for dear life. I came to the realization that even though Corey and Tyler (two of my go to training partners) had passed me in workouts it wasn't because I was getting slower but because they too were getting faster. And as much as I HATE not being in the front chasing them has made my workouts a lot faster as well. (They would probably be mad if they knew I pretend they are females in upcoming races that I want to beat!! ) All this being said I am really excited to get into another race and am hoping that Gate River will be the start to a great year for me! Who knows if it will go good but I am optomistic because do we ever really know?
Here is to hoping this is the start of a nice long climb to the peak!