Mental Training, Too

My training run yesterday was supposed to be 10 miles in length. I did 8 and I've been upset about it ever since. After reflecting on it overnight, I realized that I made a series of bad decisions during the course of the run. Most were pretty minor by themselves. Only the final decision completely shut down the run. However, there was a cascading effect between each of the small decisions that led to the final shut down at 8 miles. It goes something like this:

1.  - I think I was in a pretty grumpy mood. Once again we were supposed to get snow in Denver and once again it was essentially a non-event. I know that I probably shouldn't complain about non snow events, especially after the northeast got hammered, but I'm still a person that really craves 4 separate, definable seasons. Winter hasn't seemed like winter this year. It's just been a non-season between fall and spring. I never really cleared my mind of the grumpiness before the start of the run.
2.  - I built in three extra weeks into my training program to allow for minor injury healing and such. I allowed myself to contemplate using one of those weeks this week after having a less than stellar long run last week, too.
3.  - On my out and back run, I decided to turn around at the 4 mile mark instead of 5 miles. Had I done 5 miles, I would have been forced to make this a 10 mile exercise. Instead, I told myself that I'd see how I felt when I got back to my start point. If I felt good, it'd be easy to go a mile out and back the other direction on the trail.
4.  - I wasn't as careful about pace as I should have been. I started off faster than I should have. Managing pace is KEY!!!!! One would think that I would have learned that by now, but apparently it's easier said than done...
5.  - I walked up a hill at the 7 mile mark. That doesn't sound bad, but there's something odd about me and my second wind. Once I lose it, I can't get it back. The most I will be able to run after taking a walk break is 10 minutes. 5 minutes is far more likely. This has happened on several training runs as well as my 10K with Joey and Lauren and my Half Marathon. I absolutely CANNOT walk in the middle of a run if I plan to keep running.
6.  - I let the weather and body complaints rule my mind. While the weather problem was somewhat real (even with gloves on, I couldn't really feel my fingers at the end of the run), the body complaints weren't. After running 8 miles, of course one's legs are going to be a bit sore. This wasn't catastrophic failure, just soreness. The type of thing that a marathoner has to learn how to push through.
7.  - When my phone informed me that I had crossed 8 miles, I allowed myself to shut down and call this one of the three spare weeks. There was no injury here, so this is a big fail.

I've got two options for this coming week now. The first is to roll with the spare week thing allowing that mental mistakes happen, too, and learn from it. The other is to proceed to the following week. The training runs for the week will either be 3,5,3 and 10 miles or 4,5,4 and 11 miles. I'm a little worried about making the jump from 8 to 11 miles on the long run but I am still going to try that route (generally speaking, one shouldn't do increases of more than about 10% per week but I think my body is capable). My mental toughness definitely jumped a notch this week thanks to this "failure," so in the end it may not be a bad thing.

 All in all, I think it will be an important training lesson. Lesser races -- 5Ks, 10Ks and even Half Marathons -- are about getting the body in shape. Even at this early stage of marathon training, I'm learning that it's as important (or perhaps even more important) to get the mind in shape, too. And honestly, that's one of the driving forces behind this adventure, so all is as it should be, I guess. I just need to make sure that I learn my lessons.

To reinforce that, here's my training quote from George S. Patton again:

"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the

mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give

up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the

mind is not tired."