18 Hard Hard Miles

But I did it.

In my chant that I say to get psyched up mentally I say, "I am mind-body-spirit strong." Today I was none of those things.

I basically had myself psyched out from the beginning. All day on Friday I kept thinking about all the reasons why the run would be hard. 1.I was alone. 2.It was 18 miles, the longest I've run. 3.It was going to be rainy 4.I was on a trail that I had a bad run on the last time I was on it. The trail is dreary and boring. Dead brown grass all around, next to a river. 5.I only managed one 5 mile run during the week. (The reason there aren't posts between last Saturday's run and this one.)

So pretty much I hit a wall before I even began. Every step was tough.

But on the bright side, my body(knees,hips) felt surprisingly really good for 18 miles! I felt confident about that. Even tough it was such a tough run, I still managed an average of 10:16 sec. miles.

One of the things that saved me on this run was the fact that at mile 6 the trail turned out to be part of the course of the first half marathon that I ran! It was fun to think about that as I ran along the course. It was miles 10-13 of the half marathon. I was running it backward when I got to it, but when I turned around, then I was running the same direction as I did when I ran the half. So that was fun to think about.

Anyway, glad it's over! And even though it was a very tough run, and I wondered the whole time why I was even doing it, I'm still grateful that I can run. I'm not taking it for granted.

Looking forward to a shorter run next weekend!