Planes, Trains, and Running Shoes

My body hates me.

Right now, we're fighting. I'm saying, "Hey I pump you with delicious, healthy foods all day every day. And don't lie because you like the ONE piece of multi-grain toast slathered with nutella and loaded with strawberries that eat every day." Even when I make my favorite Strawberry-Nutella smoothie, I load it up with Greek yogurt and soy milk so that it has 40+ grams of protein...come ON, that's like a small steak!

But my body is all, "You think you can skip out on dinner so that you can eat half a bag of Tostitos Lime with an entire bowl of Guacamole AND drink 3 glasses of wine just because your friends are doing it? Well I'm going to make you pay. You don't even like The Bachelor."

Woah. Calm down body. I had a stressful day yesterday and ate really good, yummy, healthy foods but decided to unwind a bit with some runner friends over The Bachelor and you need to be ok with that.

Right now, I should be running. I should also be working on my thesis. Instead, I'm in bed. Because my body hates me. Oh and my mind hates me too.

Let's rewind to Sunday when I ran 20 miles with an average pace of 9:34. Only 4 seconds off from where I should have been for the run, so not bad at all. Except that once I recovered from Mile 9 when my stomach tried to wrench itself out of my body, my mind went all, "You're soooo slow, Christy. You can't even get below a 9:08 pace on this run, you're never gonna go sub-4." And I believed it and was really angry from about Mile 14 on.

They say running is 80% mental. I don't entirely believe that. I couldn't go run a 100 mile race tomorrow and it has nothing to do with me being mentally inept in some way. But lately, I've been really hard on myself. I've been struggling to hit the paces I want to and I've been beating myself up over it. The good thing is, that I recognize that and I have 6 weeks to get it out of my head and keep working towards my goal before Race Day. So I've made a list of excuses that aren't really excuses that might explain my struggle lately.

1. I've done my last two MGP runs on days with wind advisory warnings on the West Side Highway...which is a notoriously windy place...so not hitting my goal pace in those conditions is to be expected.
2. Central Park is not an easy route to run and I've done all of my long training runs in the park. Those hills, while they feel natural, are never going to feel easy. They might feel easier on some days than others but it's not a bad thing if I'm struggling on them. 
3. Training in really tough wind conditions on a not so easy course, is just going to make me stronger and better equipped to handle a mostly downhill course with some early hills and a slow incline towards the finish.