This is the part of training that’s kind of cool. Being my first marsthon, long runs are turning into distance PRs!

That definitely helps me with motivation, as I get competitive with myself. Not gonna lie, though. Today’s miles were a bit tough. I don’t know if it was the cold. The new fuel belt, though I got it adjusted and comfy by 0.5 miles. 

Maybe it was the roads and sidewalks, which literally were not even remotely cleared for about 90% of my route. 

This picture doesn’t even show the worst areas I went through. Definitely made it tough, trying to find a clear-ish route where I wouldn’t slip and fall or get hit by a car. The worst was by the water where I guess no one takes on clearing the sidewalks over there. I am actually a little surprised I wasn’t hit by a car over there. 

The turkeys crossing didn’t add agony to my run. Wild turkeys like me (you can ask my best friend, Lesley, about a story from my driver’s ed oh so many years ago!) and they were kind of cute. 

I lost my mittens at about 4.5 miles, which was a wicked bummer. I started out wearing them but it wasn’t too bad out weather wise and I tried to latch them on to my new belt. Fail. But ultimately that didn’t make my run tough. 

In truth, it was probably a combination of everything paired with this being my longest distance to date and the need to just mentally push through. I felt great getting out there and then around mile 9.5 it wasn’t necessarily negative talk, but almost more like some self doubt creeping in. Really when I started out today I was like, “Man this run is so great! Blog title ’15 miles and feeling fine!'” Definitely didn’t feel I could use that when I finally got back to home. 

I’m happy I was able to push through, but really I was feeling close to not being able to. I’ll be curious to see how my next few long runs go and if I seem to hit a similar mental road block. Tuesday I’m going to our team psychologist’s lecture “It’s All in Your Head” and the timing could not be better. I did add fueling and water to my run today (though admittedly I have no real sense of if that helped or not, just know it’s a necessity at this point) but now I think getting some tips and tricks to keep myself mentally in check for the longer miles is going to be really helpful. 

I’m still enjoying this process a lot. And part of a challenge is experiencing the highs and pushing through the lows, so I’m not going to get down because of this one run. 

To lighten things up a bit, I’ll once again invite you into my bizarre running brain. For over an hour I was singing “The Monster” by Eminem but I literally know none of the words so it turned into something like “I’m friends with a monster, it’s under your bed. I really like monsters, they’re all in your head. You try to save me, but I like them so bad. And you think I’m crazy, you think I’m crazy.” It went even more downhill from there.  Also, when I was on sea street I literally could not stop thinking “sea lions on sea street. Sea lions on sea street!” I don’t ask questions anymore, I just go with it.