Ignorance (a gift and a curse)

My motivation to train is almost back. I do not have to kick myself out of the door before every single workout. I guess that I am tired thus also my motivation is down, right?

But that's not what I want to write about.
I love having a quantitative measure for all my hard workouts. I wear a stopwatch on track, look at power on a bike and pace clock is always on when I am in a pool.
Now I am in the running build phase and I do not feel like obsessing about my pace. I run all faster runs on trail now and I wore Garmin for some tempo runs and a longer intervals in the past but in the last month I just run tempos/intervals by feel mostly because I always forget to charge the Garmin, plus I hate it, plus I do not really want to know my pace.
You see, I know I am running slowly, I just know it! But I do not have a real proof other than how I feel so I am happy and I don't stress it.
Can I run faster? Yes. Do I want to run faster? I am not sure. And that's the problem. On one hand I want to run mile repeats in 6:20 because running them in 7:20 (I think it is a true story, I am 99% sure that I ran 4xmile at 7:20 pace two weeks ago) won't make me faster runner. But on the other hand it is February, my A-race is June 30 so it feels like too early to put all that you-must-run-fast pressure on myself. I feel I still have time for that. But I know that I am running too slowly when I am not wearing a watch to keep me accountable.
So I am trying to decide what to do. Keep this haphazardous but very freeing and fun running for another month or put my sh*t together and start real mindful running and try to hit my prescribed paces instead of pretending I am hitting them although I know I am not.

On a different note. That MAF running training I wanted to do went pretty much out the window after two weeks because I don't like wearing that stupid Garmin for my easy runs and thus I always "forget" to charge it. But it does not matter since I do my easy runs easy.

I did a 3h40m ride yesterday wearing my ski gloves, jacket and winter boots. I used to do that in Michigan all the time but I have become a real cyclist since then (aka brainwashed) and those do not do that so I was suffering either frostbite or back to back 3h trainer rides. But screw that. There is nothing wrong with biking in winter boots and wearing ski goggles instead of sunglasses.

Pool lifeguard gave me a swimsuit because it does not fit her. Nice!

I was thinking about racing a half-marathon before that half-ironman in June but I don't think I will do that. If my ITB can't handle 95min of road pounding I would rather find out during that HIM than in April and then don't be able to do that HIM. So my first real half-marathon race will be as part of half-ironman.