Turning a bad run into a good run

Do you want to know what running looks like at 5 am in the morning in the winter in Iowa?

Here you go!

I started out at 4:50 AM for an easy long run of 18 miles from work. I know "easy" and "18 miles" probably don't go together, but it is much better than racing 18 miles. I had quite the week of speed work, so running long a day earlier cut out one day of a easy recovery run. Basically, it was a sucky 18 mile run that turned into a sucky 20 mile run.

Huh? How do you plan to run 18, have it be a not so good run, and then end up with 20? Let me try to explain....

Today was just one of those days where my running was, at best, out of sync. I believe, like many sports, running is mental. When I was out running my planned 18 miles, it was not going well. I wasn't running as hard/fast as I wanted and I wasn't hitting my timing marks/miles like I wanted.

At mile 16.75, I attempted to jump from a street to a bike trail. Too bad the street decided to play a joke on me. It put a patch of ice right where I pushed off for the jump. After a few seconds of assessing that all my bones were still attached and together, I got up and brushed the light snow off. No rips on the clothes - I seemed to be okay. Too bad the bus full of kids saw me take the spill - I'm sure they thought it was funny and likely a short video will show up on YouTube in the near future.

Okay, the run was now officially "not a good run". I was going to head back to work and call it day for running. Than I thought 18 miles is good, but 20 is a solid long run. By running just two more miles, I can get a 20 mile run completed, something I haven't done since August. Okay, how bad could 2 more miles really be? In today's case, it wasn't any worse than the first 18. If it going to be bad anyway, at least, mentally, 20 miles is a huge accomplishment.

I finished at 20.2 miles at 2 hrs and 50 minutes without stopping my watch (I guess I had about 5-8 minutes of stop time due to traffic, water, etc.)

I'll take it for an easy long run. First 20 mile run back from injury - yeah for me!

2/3 - Progression run 20,20,20 min at Easy (8:20), Race (7:01), and Threshold (6:38) - 9.25 miles with warm-up and cool down

2/4 - 7.5 miles - easy

2/5 - 20 miles - easy long run

YTD - 227.85