Yesterday, I set out to run my long run of the week. It was about 23 degrees out and cloudy. I wanted to get in 10 miles, and I wanted to pace them at 12 minutes each. My speed really suffers during the final third of my long runs and I want to change that.

Actually I need to change that because of my fear of being last in a race. I’m running the Mid-Winter Classic 10 miler next Sunday and if I run slower than 13 minute miles I will be last. LAST. I really don’t want to be last.

So I set out yesterday to run as many 12 minute miles as possible. If I can run 10 miles in less than 2:10, I’ll be satisfied that I won’t embarrass myself during next week’s race. I was fighting against daylight as well, so I really needed to get this run in right around 2 hours.

The path was not ideal. I thought it would have been a bit more groomed than this:

It was tough slogging through the snow and ice. The first mile was good, I completed it in 11:29 so I felt good about that. During the second mile, my foot started to hurt. I’m assuming it was due to the snow being much deeper than I’m used to. I finished the second mile in 12:49 so it wasn’t going great, but I was still close enough to my goal time. I was not feeling good. My shoulders were hurting, and my foot did not feel right.

Then right after the second mile, at the beginning of Tukey’s bridge, there was a water obstacle. The water went up to both sides of of the path and there was no way around it, I had to walk through it. Turns out it was about 3 inches deep. Crap. My shoes were soaked through and I was really worried about frostbite.

I got to the turn off to head to the east end and I decided at that moment not to finish this run. I still had about an hour and a half to run, and I just didn’t have it. I’m not one to give up often, but this seemed like the right thing to do. I walked/jogged the last mile back to my car and ended up doing a 5k in 39 minutes.

This is what it looked like when I quit this run. It is also what I felt like. Dark Storm Clouds. Broken Ice.

Today, I decided I needed a do-over. I needed redemption. I decided to change many variables of my run so it wouldn’t have the same problems as yesterday’s run.

I headed out in the late morning (once it got warm enough) so I wouldn’t have to worry about beating the sunset. I ran a route that had a lot of wide shouldered roads so I wouldn’t be on so many snow covered trails (just a few bad sidewalks here and there). The weather was good, it was in the 30s and the wind was less than 5 mph. It wasn’t sunny but the sun was visible behind the cloud cover.

My husband drove me to Portland and then he took the kids to Fort Williams to sled. I knew I would see them sledding at the 4 mile mark, so that was a fun motivator to keep going. I knew after about a mile that this run was going so much better than yesterday’s.

The first mile I completed in 12:22, but I had to wait for a few stoplights. The second mile was faster (11:53). The third was 12:36 and the fourth was 11:59.

The sidewalks were not good, but where I could I ran on the roads which were dry. Before I knew it I was at mile 4 and was less than a minute off of my goal pace (48:50).

I took a picture of my kids sledding at Fort Williams. Other than one other pictures I didn’t stop to take pictures this entire run. I was running for time, not for fun!  If you want to see picture of the course I ran today, you can see this post which I ran slowly and was quite a shutterbug!

I ran a loop in side the park, and then headed back to Portland. By the time I finished mile 6, I was starting to feel some fatigue, but I was only 2 minutes off my goal, which is a fairly fluid goal, and really kind of a reach, so 2 minutes is great.

I kept at it, and by the end of mile 7, I realized I only had basically a 5k to go and that made it seem a whole lot easier. I couldn’t keep up the 12 minute miles, mostly because of the sloppy conditions. Here’s a picture of a no-win situation. No shoulder, and the sidewalk has a mountain of snow!

The last three miles I did an average of 13:24, but I finished all 10 miles in 2 hours 7 minutes. I’m pretty happy about that. There’s a decent chance I won’t be last. Also, I won’t have to wait for stoplights during the race, so that should buy me an extra half minute or so.

My husband picked me up in Portland and we all went to Otto’s pizza for lunch. I am completely in love with their Butternut Squash, Ricotta cheese, dried cranberry slice. This run burned over 1000 calories, so this was a guilt free slice of heaven.

I’m so glad I didn’t let yesterday’s discouragement prevent me from trying again today. I feel great that I can come within a few minutes of my goal time on a training run. I am really looking forward to the race next week, and I fully expect to reach my goal of not being last.