It's Mojo Jar Monday!

So as the summer has gone on I've been keeping up with my running almost as planned but I can definitely tell that my running mojo has been slipping.  There is a big difference between "doing a run" and "doing a run well".  As in, working hard at your runs so that you're training your body to actually be able to do something more than it already can.

Hmm, can't say the runs from the last part of my summer quite fit that description.  I have a HUGE goal coming up in just 4 months (ahem, Goofy Challenge) and I want to make sure I do the best training I can, that I feel the best I can and become the best runner I can be by race day in January 2013.  Turns out one of my favourite running bloggers (Cori, who is also training for Goofy) is feeling kind of the same way lately...mojo-less!

After lamenting about our missing mojo, she came up with a great idea - "Let's issue each other running 'challenges' each week to mix things up a little..."  I liked the idea right away so we put our heads together and came up with the Mojo Jar!

So what the heck is a Mojo Jar, you ask?

The Mojo Jar is a handy little jar we have each stuffed full of running challenges - between the two of us there is one challenge for each of the 18 weeks left from now until Goofy.  Every Monday (which from here on out will be known as Mojo Jar Monday) we will draw out a challenge and issue it to each other.

Cori started and drew out the following challenge for this week:

Our first Mojo Jar Monday challenge!

Cool!  I have never been good at doing negative splits so this little challenge will be a good chance to work on it.  I decided to give it a try tonight on my run.  I just had a short 3-4km planned (since I've been in the car all day driving home from the cabin) and figured it would be worth a shot.

I planned out the paces for each km and off I went.  Clearly I am not good at planning workouts like this because while the first km was fine, the second one was kinda hard and by the time I hit my 3rd and 4th kms I was practically ready to throw up!  I started at way too quick a pace because I could barely keep up as the distance went by!  Oops!

But did I do it?  Well, let's see...

• Split 1 - 6:16/km
• Split 2 - 5:55/km
• Split 3 - 5:52/km
• Split 4 - 4:53/km

So I guess I did, but it wasn't planned very well and I couldn't keep up the faster paces for the whole planned distance near the end.  When you take into account my walk breaks the whole thing averages down to a 6:08/km pace for the whole 4.8km.  It was tough but it felt good to have such a specific goal and try to achieve it.  From what I hear negative splits are where it's at for longer distances so for my 14km race this weekend I'm going to try and do negative splits and see how it goes.  Probably I'll aim to go negative on a more first-half/last-half basis though...  

If you feel like your mojo is lacking a little bit too, feel free to play along with Cori and I.  We'll be posting and writing about Mojo Jar Monday both here and on Cori's blog Read.Write.Run.Mom.  If you follow us on Twitter you'll likely hear about it there too.  :o)

The "rules" are simple:

• Weekly challenges will be randomly drawn and posted every Mojo Jar Monday
• The goal is to complete the challenge during one or more of your runs that week
• Most importantly HAVE FUN and hopefully our little challenges will help bring some mojo back to our running (and maybe yours too!)

Happy running!