I wish my run training worked like the movies

Another day, another 3.64 miles

There's a common trope in film, where the lead character goes all out training for a major challenge. There is usually one scene, played out in a series of quick cuts, showing the overwhelmed hero progressing beyond his or her physical limits. Typically, this is all done to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger." Two minutes later, the protagonist is ripped and ready to make something big happen.

I thought about that on my run this morning. Since I'm the hero of my own personal movie, I've set my sights on returning to performance levels I haven't seen for a few years. I'm not completely delusional. At my age, I know I'm not going to match my best times and that's okay. My issue is that I'm not where I feel I should be for my age range. In competition, I would usually finish between the 25th and 50th percentile (I placed best in 5Ks and worst in halfs). I'm not sure I'd even show up on the bell right now.

So my equivalent of this cinematic convention is the work I'm doing to build up my monthly mileage. In my movie, you would see a series of shots of me taking off on my daily runs, with a calender showing the day of the week superimposed transparently over my disappearing silhouette. In one shot, I'd pull up at the finish, look at my Garmin, and gasp at the evidence of improvement. My legs would bulge with muscle tone and I'd resemble one of those ectomorphs who start races in the front row and finish before most runners reach the halfway mark.

Well, in the 50 days since I rebooted my running approach, I've made some gains, but it's nothing dramatic. I've doubled my monthly distance in that time and my average run is a half a mile longer than it was in April. Despite all this running, my average pace has improved zilch. However, in the same period, my average heart rate during runs has dropped 8 bpm. That's telling me my fitness is improving, but I'm not taking advantage of it. I'm going to try to focus on that tomorrow to see if it's that simple. In the movies, the hero turns their hard work into victory. I'd settle for a mid-pack pace.