run commute

Oh man. Today was a new low in so many ways. :( Not to get overly dramatic and drag this mostly upbeat and sarcastic blog into the swamp of emotion but today I had some family shit hit the fan and it just killed me running home.

See what I did there? I took something heavy and made it light. Light, light, light; let's keep it light.

But we'll start at the beginning.

This morning I decided to run in at the last minute and had not eaten any breakfast yet. Combine that with less enthusiasm than usual and I was not moving quickly. But I made it. Job done.

Around the middle of the day I was hit by this emotional atomic bomb [Yes, I do like to exaggerate, just a little...] and must have compartmentalized it for the last four hours of work. I should have known that something was amiss when I looked at my watch around 4:30 and thought that calling Shelley for a ride home sounded like a pretty darn good idea.

I left the office and not one mile later I was walking. I couldn't figure it out as my legs felt pretty reasonable and I was not going fast. Half a mile later I was walking again. And crying. And then I realized just what the problem was.

I kept trying to jog but it would only last about half a mile and then I would have to walk again while my brain tried to come to grips with things. When you combine lots of tears with it being really dark out and me not having a headlamp it was slow going. Descending down Interlaken to the lake I had to walk because I could not see where I was putting my feet! The last thing I wanted to do was take some massive spill in my fragile mental state - that would have been the perfect topper to the day.

Down along the water I finally managed to sustain a jog all the way home.

My ultra friends tell me that pretty much everyone should count on experiencing a low during a long run. They keys are 1) not having any baggage going in so odds of having a low is reduced and 2) knowing it might be coming and rolling with it if it does. They also say that being mentally ready to go the distance is more important than being perfectly trained. Since I'm new to this it has been the one thing that weighs on my more than the concern of getting physically ready to run 100 miles as it sounds like it's out of your control. Today I ran a measly five miles and had a breakdown of sorts and it was not fun. If something like that happened on a longer run I'm fairly certain it would be curtains for me. I guess the lesson learned here is don't start unless you are psyched to make the journey. In retrospect calling Shelley would have been a good idea. Then again, I survived and sometimes a good cry can be pretty cathartic; it was in my case so it wasn't all bad. :)

Today was the first day in the 30s, I wore shorts but this is about as cold as I'd like to go. Might be time to find some running knickers.

Look at my GPS data below, 8:30 pace going to work, 8:50 coming home. Sheesh.

Sleep
Waking HR
Body Weight	7:40 AM - 179
Body Fat
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Workout Food	water
Injuries
Therapy
Time of Day
Workout Type	Not anything productive... super slow, plodding junk miles.
Weather	upper 30s in the AM, low 40s coming home, partly cloudy, dry, calm
Course
Results
Time
Distance
Pace
Equipment	Brooks Launch, The North Face Angstrom 30 (12 lb. running in, pretty light coming home)
Clothing	Brooks Infinity Short III, Teko organic SIN3RGI Light Minicrew, Craft long sleeve undershirt, Brooks Podium LS shirt, Polypropylene gloves