dave-sleep+stress+humidity = a tired, stressed, wet dave

I have been looking forward to this run all week. A step back run of only 14 miles. This past week has been the worst of any week throughout training. After last weekends 23 mile run, I was feeling pretty good, even if I am another year older now. I was ready for my usual recovery run on Monday, but the schedule was a little different and had me rest an extra day. I was going to ignore this, but when it came time to run, life and work got in the way a bit and changed my plans. I was okay with this," better to rest like the schedule said", I thought. I knew I would be out of town on Wednesday so I moved my 8 mile tempo run to Tuesday night, so all the more reason for the extra day of rest. Then the rest of the week?

Nothing. Zip. Nada. My work schedule increased exponentially and my short runs and cross training went by the way side. It made me grumpy, but I thought a little rest couldn't hurt anyway. This is where there is a flaw in my thinking...I didn't get any rest, I have been exhausted for the last couple of days. It was all I could do to stay up until 10 last night. I tried to sleep in a little later than usual this morning and start the run a little later than usual. It didn't help much - the cats thought I was supposed to get up at my usual time and didn't let me sleep in. Damn cats! The weather called for a 50% chance of rain all day. I didn't let that influence my decision to run. Unless it was pouring down rain, I was going to run. I met Jason at his place at 8am. The sky was overcast and it was an comfortable 68 degrees. The surprising thing was the humidity. It felt very damp out. At first, it didn't feel too bad, but as the run progressed, I was feeling the dampness all the way through my body. I felt like we were running through a tropical jungle. My clothes were soaked, my feet were soaked -- I even think my fingers were pruning! About 2 miles into the run, I was feeling ready to turn around and quit. I felt horrible. Jason wasn't feeling all that good either, but we both decided we needed to do this run and were going to finish it - all 14 miles. The goal was to run this easy for the first two miles, then slip into marathon pace for the remaining 12. Well, we started out just about on pace and were fairly consistant for awhile, then we turned around and ran into a strong head wind... mentally it was beating me up. In fact, it was like having deja vu. Last night I had a disturbing dream that I was out for a run when all of a sudden I was running as hard as I could, but I was barely moving forward... does this mean anything? I love the foreshadowing, but hate that it was so damn literal...

We plodded along, feeling more and more lousy, but refused to give up. We pushed through and actually finished stronger than I thought we would. This run was not a huge confidence builder for me, but a lot of these shorter step-back runs have not been. If I look for a silver lining in all of this, it is that eventhough we felt like crap for the run, our average pace was a respectable 9:18/mile, we were still able to finish strong and my legs never felt like they were ready to give out. I am sticking to my original goals still... for better or for worse... Here's how it all went down:

• Mile 1 -- 9:02
• Mile 2 -- 9:09
• Mile 3 -- 9:02
• Mile 4 -- 9:20
• Mile 5 -- 9:06
• Mile 6 -- 9:24
• Mile 7 -- 9:17
• Mile 8 -- 9:17
• Mile 9 -- 9:27
• Mile 10 -- 9:38
• Mile 11 -- 9:38
• Mile 12 -- 9:24
• Mile 13 -- 9:31
• Mile 14 -- 8:55