A Long, Cold Run

I never made it out for a run Thursday morning.  It was raining when I woke up... plus I'd had a few glasses of wine the night before.  Extra rest days are good now and then, right?  That's what I like to tell myself.

Saturday morning I drove up to the Catskills for a ski weekend with my friends.  I'm more of a hot chocolate at the lodge girl, so I skipped the slopes and went for a nice long run in the afternoon.  I had a long, slow 17 on the agenda.

It was cold. Painfully cold.  I think my fingers are still thawing out.

The first 15 were pretty but hilly.  I'm not used to running in the afternoon, so I definitely felt breakfast jostling around in my stomach a little.  Soon enough everything settled, and by mile 4 or 5 I was feeling awesome. 

Around mile 10 I got excited - 2/3 of the way done!  Yay!  Oh wait... today is 17 miles, not 15.  So I have 7 left.  Great.

I can usually keep myself motivated on long runs, but on Saturday, I just wanted it to be over. 

By the time I got back to the lodge, I had two miles left.  The roads were way too icy to keep running on the sides of the road, so I did the last two miles by doing laps around the parking lot.  Definitely not recommended - my fingers were burning and my legs were achy and I really just wanted to go home.  Running laps around parked cars is super boring and the miles just drag on.  I started to get cranky - apologies to my running partner Jillian.

When I got back to the house, I just wanted to lie down and sleep.  My legs were really sore and I just kept thinking, "That was hard and somewhat miserable, but you signed up to run 9 miles further than that!"  I wanted to run 12:00 miles, but I was way slower:

Overall not the best run, in terms of my morale or speed. 

I'm fine with that though.  While I was running, I started thinking about the last time I was at the resort.  Last year for New Year's Eve, I went up to the same resort celebrate with my friends.  All I wanted to do was party and have an epic night.  And look decent in my skintight dress, which I knew I hadn't lost enough weight to wear. 

My biggest priority last New Year's was to take a new profile picture.  My biggest priority this year was to finish 17 miles.  I might not be running very fast, but at least I'm running - and that's a big improvement over last year.