Down but not out

On Saturday I had on the hardest run of my life. 20 mile trail run with 3900’ of total climbing. On the final climb the wheels fell off and I spent the last few miles questioning my sanity. I worried that I would not make it back to my car. I found out that when your legs turn to mush they don’t like running downhill. This 20 mile run took me 3:56:37 which is about 2 minutes on my feet more than my last marathon all while averaging a HR in the 150’s. I was ready to give up on my next race (switch to the 25K).

Mental Recovery in 3 steps:
1. I took Sunday off and didn’t think about running
2. This morning I had a redemption run 10 miles at 8:15 pace, my legs felt fine
3. Made the graph below to see the elevation of this training run vs. the upcoming race (red was the tail run this Saturday and blue is the race in a few weeks). The trail that I have been running is way tougher than the race will be.



I got kicked off the horse but I am back on board, confidence slightly bruised. Already looking back I can see a few mistakes I made that I can improve on for the race