Sometimes I'm amazed at how a long run one week can seem so perfect and effortless. And then the next week everything sucks and nothing goes well.

That's been the story of my last two long runs.

Last week, I did 8 miles and everything felt amazing. My legs felt loose, the weather was fairly pleasant, I was moving at a decent pace, and I actually managed to negative split the run. The second set of four miles was a full minute+ faster than the first four miles.



This past weekend though, I don't think my run could have gone any worse.

First off, it was raining. And while it wasn't raining that hard when I first started the run, by one mile in it was close to pouring and I was soaked through. My shoes were waterlogged, my shorts were clingy to my thighs and water was streaming off my forehead into my heads.

And to top things off, I felt like crap. My legs felt like dead weight. I was sluggish (and probably hadn't fueled enough the day before). By three miles in, I was thinking about turning around and calling it quits.

I had ten miles scheduled, but I just wasn't sure how that was going to happen.



I managed to push on up the trail until Garmin read 4.33, but that was it. I turned around and did some semblance of a run/walk back home. By mile 7, it was more like shuffle a few steps, go back to walking, shuffle a few more steps, walk some more.

I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. It was a disaster.

I know that bad runs happen and this doesn't mean that my race in a few weeks is going to suck that bad, but it's still disheartening to have such a terrible long run, especially the week after I had such an awesome one.