Tired Long Run

AM: 12 miles incl. 3 uptempo (~6 min. pace)

I'm beginning to think it's physically impossible for me to have a good Sunday long run. There was no reason why today shouldn't have gone well; I'd arranged to have Caitlin with me on the easy miles and Jordan and Nick to pull me along through the uptempo section. In between there were plenty of familiar faces dotting the trails to keep things interesting. Yet despite all this, I ended up feeling like crap and cutting the scheduled 14-miler a few miles short.

In part, this was due to my foot. After experiencing a near perfect recovery, owed in part to a forced day off and in larger part to a clutch visit to Greenapple Sports & Wellness, I expected smooth sailing today. All went according to plan until I twice--not once, but twice--managed to step on a rock on what felt like the precise place where my foot had been hurting. And just like that, it was inflamed and irritated enough to make me conscious of it (and, consequently, annoyed by it) for the rest of the run.

The second reason I cut the run short is because, simply put, my body was just tired. I'd naively assumed that I'd be raring to go after yesterday's day off, but I conveniently forgot to take into account the fact that I'd still been working on my feet for a solid 12 hours. And, despite the fact that my overall mileage will be lower for the week--close to 60 as opposed to last week's 80--today's "uptempo" run would be the third workout I've attempted to cram in to the last six days.

That said, I'm not one for excuses. Running six-minute pace today was a struggle, despite the fact that in recent workouts I've run faster than that pace for twice the distance and not felt exhausted at the end. To put in as much effort as I was to run as slowly as I did today was discouraging, so after the less than stellar section with Jordan and Nick I just decided to call it a day. Maybe I should've pushed through, but I just didn't feel like it. What I did feel like was taking a nap. On the ground. In the Boyce parking lot. So, for the second Sunday in a row, this tired puppy did just that while waiting for Jordan to finish his run. Oh, and I also took a three hour nap at home later.

Thankfully, mercifully, tomorrow marks the beginning of a fresh week.