TotR: Running Solo FTW!

This week’s Tuesday on the Run topic is Running Solo vs with a Group and little ol’ introverted me is all about the solo runs! Thanks as always to April, Patty and Erika for hosting our little round up!

Today is definitely a day I’m craving a solo run. Oliver and I were supposed to come home yesterday from our big weekend visiting friends in Indianapolis but thanks to storms in Chicago, that didn’t quite happen. Our flight yesterday got cancelled and we ended back out at our friends house for the night. I’m really glad we had that option and I didn’t have to hang out all day in an airport and hotel with Oliver! He’s a good traveler but that would have been pushing it. As it was, it ended up being a really long day before it all got sorted out. O fell asleep in my arms for the hour I waited in line for our new flight. 40 pounds of sleeping kid is really tough on the arms! We got our car seat back and a new rental car and headed back out. NSV: What I was craving after all of that was a) a cup of coffee and b) a big salad. Yay for healthy habits 🙂

I was also craving a run alone. A big part of being an introvert is the need for that quiet internal time to recharge. I can interact with people. I can handle all kinds of stresses. Life requires that, right? However, to balance that, I need time with just myself and since I’ve started running, I’ve found running to be the best reset I’ve ever known. Even now, exhausted after a long weekend of travel, too little sleep and too much solo parenting (mad respect for the amount of work single parents do!), I think I’d be heading out for a run if Oliver was old enough to leave alone after bed.

Other perks for solo running:

– Flexibility in scheduling: If life gets in the way and I can’t run at the time I intended, it’s only my own schedule or training that gets thrown off, not someone else’s (this could also be a drawback if you need the accountability of a partner!)

– Go my own pace: The idea of keeping pace with someone else stresses me out. Add the combo of a) keeping pace with someone faster or slower than me and b) socially interacting with someone and you get a stressful experience instead of my biggest stress reliever! Again, this could be a perk of a running partner if you want to control your pace at a steadier/faster speed.

– Mental toughness: Without the distraction of another person, I have to find it in myself to keep going to complete the run I’d planned. Without that accountability partner we talked about above, you have to be accountable to yourself.

– Pause for as many pics as you want! Okay, maybe this only applies to runDisney races, but it is a perk. 🙂 The one race I’ve actually run with someone else was the Star Wars Half Marathon and I actually saw my friend about a mile before she saw me as we kept passing each other back and forth. I debated calling attention to myself because a) I’d never run with someone else and wasn’t sure I wanted to for 2 hours and b) I wasn’t sure how she felt about pics on course. Ultimately, she saw me and joined me and I was simply up front about the fact that I wasn’t in a hurry and I would be stopping for pics. She was cool with that and when we got near the end, I was cool with the fact that she said she’d probably take off when she got close to finish because she couldn’t resist a finish line. 🙂 Communication is definitely important when you’re running with someone else.

I’ll probably be scattering pics of my little mini-vacation with O all week because he’s such a cutie. 🙂

What about you? Do you run solo or with a group? Be sure to check out the rest of link up!

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