15 Mile Slog

On Monday, I ran the 15 miles I was scheduled to run on Sunday. It was not a fun run. As usual I stayed up too late on Sunday evening and had to get up early for work on Monday. I was really tired Monday afternoon and seriously considered taking the day off. I probably would have except my wife gave me a hard time about it. Once I started, I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be running more than 5 miles.

I would like to say that after I got started and warmed up; things got better, and I had one of those great runs that happen every once in a while. However, the truth is that it just plain sucked. I didn’t run a bad pace (average 8:04/mi), and I finished relatively strong. I just didn’t want to be running. During much of the run, I was thinking about finding the shortest route home and calling it quits. I guess the fact that I stuck it out says something about me – either I’m too bullheaded to know when to quit/rest, or I’ve got heart, guts, or whatever makes a person push through the hard times. Either way, I’m not one of those runners who feel that every workout is important and that a missed run now will negatively affect a race five months away. However, skipping long runs begins a domino effect. The most difficult part was getting started, and the main reason I stuck out the full 15 miles is that I haven’t run that far in a while, and I need to get used to longer runs so that I can get back to 20 milers by the beginning of June (start of 18-week training program).