Long Run "Fail"

My plan was to do a long run today... I was thinking 16-18 miles. On paper, given that long/hilly tempo effort yesterday, that was stupid. I think when you coach yourself its easy to think of yourself as invincible, as exempt from the standard 'rules', but as it turns out, I am not exempt. ;)

I did set out to run long, but by mile 4 I had made the decision to NOT slog through another couple of hours. Instead of taking the long way, I took the short way home, and ended up with ~7 miles, a bit more if you count the strides I did at the end trying to shake off the sluggishness. My HR wasn't high today- in fact, it was low. But my legs felt pounded and my turnover was slow and overall I just felt sluggish and without much desire to run anymore. Strides at the end almost always fix that, if I can make myself do them. Today I made myself do them.

There was a part of me that felt like today was a big giant FAIL, but I sort of think the bigger fail might have been to keep pressing on when I felt like garbage. Instead I came home, spent time with my family decorating our Christmas tree, then did a bunch of laundry and thoroughly cleaned most of my house (which I haven't done for a long time).

Later in the afternoon I played outside with my 45lb bar and logged another ~11,000lbs on the Big Steel Challenge board. I've figured out a few things this week regarding this challenge... 1) I like to be ranked toward the top of the list; 2) If I "only" log 10-12k in a session, I'm less likely to be super sore the next day which means I can lift again sooner (consistency!); 3) Given lesson #2, if I want to log the highest *total* that I can, 10-12k 5x/week will be better than 18-20k 2x/week. 4) Pull ups give a decent 'bang for my buck'. They count as body weight x reps, so 3 reps gets me just over 400lbs. This weekend I did a total of 11x3 (my pull-up bar is near my laundry room so every time I did a load...) 5) The Steel Challenge is super motivating for me!! I genuinely like the "competition" and absolutely will do more because of it. Maybe I should join Strava?? #NO

Later in the afternoon Maia was begging me to run so what the heck I laced up and we ran another ~30' this afternoon. I felt 100x better than I did in the morning. I would not have gone running again this afternoon had it not been for her beautiful loving and loyal eyes. She ran 6x for a total of ~18 miles this week! Her endurance is 100x better than it was 3 weeks ago. Her knowledge of where all the stray cats live is also quite keen.