Day 3,738 —9 for Now: Reflections on my 50-mile run Last Week—

I bought some new shorts, and they might not have pockets, but they are so much more comfortable compared to the muscle shorts I have been wearing. I thought I was okay trading pockets for comfort, but recently I have been seriously reconsidering my previous decisions.

         I was thinking I needed to run at least 17 miles today to hit my mileage goal, but that changed when my daughter asked me this morning, “Where do you want to go today?”

         I had thought I was in the clear because I went to Grant’s farm with her yesterday, but I guess not. She desperately wanted to go somewhere and because I thought it was too hot to be outside, I suggested the Magic House.

         My wife told me she was disappointed I had not brought her home a vegan donut from Strange Donuts yesterday. She had told me before she didn’t love cinnamon. The donut was cinnamon sugar, so I did not think she would mind if my daughter had two donuts. My daughter insisted her mom would be okay with this. She went on and on about her mom preferring jelly-filled donuts. My wife had not been amused. Instead, she had been disappointed I had not brought home a specific vegan donut for her. When I pointed out that I had brought home most of a donut for her that our daughter had eaten some of, she made no comment.

Last week when I went out at 6:30 I knew I wasn’t going to be able to run 67 miles, but I didn’t know what was reasonable to run with plenty of breaks throughout the day.

         Most of the morning I was in a good mood and was mostly enjoying the long breaks, but when it got to the early evening and I hadn’t hit 50 miles, it was beginning to get stressful. I think part of me thought I was still going to be able to run a 100K, but when that got out of reach, it was hard to stay motivated to even bother with 50 miles. On Monday it took me 9 and a half hours to hit 50 miles, on Tuesday it took almost 14 hours. These are both elapsed time, and I didn’t have a lot of control on how long some of my breaks were lasting, but it was disheartening.

         I started thinking that even if I did 50 miles on Wednesday, that wasn’t that much. 167 miles in 3 days seemed like nothing at the time, and I started to think about what even would make sense to consider at this point.