Going Mental

So I crashed and burned on my last 20 miler before Boston this past Sunday. I was fighting a cold and I had zero energy from the start. By mile 10 I felt like I had already run 20 and I finally threw in the towel after 15 miles. I figured it was safer to cut it short than to tough it out and cause an injury this close to race day.

Fast forward to today and once again I have zero energy and don't even feel like running (and that NEVER happens!). I'm even having trouble getting excited for Boston, which is only 3 weeks away. I decide to go out for an easy pace recovery run, no more than 5 miles. As soon as I start running I begin negotiating with myself and trimming the run down to 4 miles, with the promise that I'll do a hard run tomorrow. During mile 2 it finally dawns on me that there is nothing physically wrong with me, my shin is probably at 80-85% and not much of an issue. But what has happened is that I've been playing it safe for the last 5 weeks, giving the shin a chance to heal and I've lost my mental toughness. And so much of distance running is mental. Pushing through the pain.

So I decide to find out if this is a mental block or if my body is actually so fatigued that it's causing me to not feel like running (blasphemy!). I pick up the pace for mile 3 and at first it is tough but soon I'm cruising right along. I get to mile 3.4 which is the turn around and go home point if I'm running 4 miles. Instead of turning left to head home, I turn right and proceed to run a fast, intense hill workout for the next 3 miles. Ah, there it is. There's that good pain.

Break on through to the other side. I'm back. Boston, here I come.