Clydes, Comfort Zone and Learning to Embrace a Little Speed in My Life

This weekend marks the beginning of the next series of races - beginning with Clydes 10k, a fun little race that was a bit of a paradigm shift for me last year. I ran Clydes that day after a 20 mile long run in the rain in 51 minutes. The race fell on my 46 birthday so I wanted to run it as fast as I could ater such a run the day before. 51 minutes - not fast by any means but I was happy with it. You see up to that point I hadn't really done any speed work or tempo runs to speak of - sometimes I ran faster then other times but it all depended on how I felt at the time. Most of my races were long - marathon or longer - so I didn't feel that added speed work had as much benifit for me as simply running. Clydes showed me that I did have a little (very little compared to some) speed in my legs and there would and could be more if I approached it right. I really learned to appreciate shorter races - from 5k to half marathons and definitely felt more complete (and stronger) as a runner. I fell in love with tempo runs and they're still my favorite run of the week. To top it off my longer races really took a turn for the best I have set PR's from 5ks to 50 miles while recovering quicker after each race. I do attribute much of this to my diet and I believe it's a vegan (high carb/low fat) lifestyle that allowed me to run a somewhat fast 10k last year after a hard workout the day before. This year I have a little taper after a few weeks of building up the milage so will see what race day brings. I would like to break :50 and do so routinely on my tempo runs so it shouldn't be an issue (I hope)
So the message for today is it's ok to specialize but we do need to step pout from our comfort zones and try new events and different distances. Who kmows what adventures they may lead to?

Peace,
Eric