It's all relative

PM: 20.1 miles at effort.  I think this might only be my second PM 20+ miler ever.  Finished after 10pm.  It was a nice change running at night as I just felt so much looser.  I went into this run with no expectations, so it was nice just to roll through 20 miles on a random run.  I suppose I always try to go long on Sundays, so it might just be out of habit.

PM: 11 miles

AM: 12.5 miles at the track, 3 of them faster, marathon-ish pace, maybe half marathon pace.  Probably didn't accomplish anything on my end, but it did help the other runners pace themselves.

PM: 10 miles, 2.5 fast.  1x10:00 at 5:00/mile pace, then some hill repeats at a steep incline.  Also did some gym work.

PM: 11.1 miles

Well, it is not looking good for the Boston Marathon.  Although I definitely do not expect to make it to the starting line in peak fitness, I did expect to be decent, and I CERTAINLY expected to have a terrific time.  With the NYC half being cancelled, the governor of MA declaring a state emergency, and a overall pretty hysterical set of humans who do not understand how transmission works, I am afraid they may just do elites only so their consecutive streak stays intact. 

How annoying would that be?  I do not even think I'd go watch them run, but would probably stay inside and watch on TV or a bar somewhere in Boston.  The irony is, I could probably go catch a Red Sox game with 37,000+ people after they cancel a race of 35,000 people.  I understand there is a huge 500,000 person crowd watching, but just tell them to stay home, and let the runners go.  We know the risks.  The incredibly minute risks.  

I guess option two would be to find some random nothing marathon somewhere and run that.  There is also option three of knocking out that 100-miler which would definitely be easier than a hard marathon.  My only concern on that is- there has to be a pretty strong contingent of ultra runners that just run to 104.8 miles just to complete the fourth marathon of the run, right?  Half (if not more) are walking a lot of the time anyway, so what's another 4.8 mile stroll?

PM: Boston marathon was cancelled, so I decided to get out some much needed frustrations on the running end of my life.  Ran a pretty decent treadmill workout.  3.5 miles on the treadmill at 5:00/mile straight, then right into a 30 second recovery followed by 6 intervals of hills on 10.0 incline at 90-95% effort, with 30 second active running recoveries at low incline.  It.  Felt.  AWESOME.  But then again, I was seriously motivated today.  

Motivation is a tricky animal.  Self-motivation is even more flighty.  Extrinsic motivation at least sticks for a couple of days, but that intrinsic motivation, man, is it hard to re-focus that energy correctly.  It really boils down to discipline.  Today I was going to skip my run completely (after hearing about Boston being cancelled.)  I went and bought a pizza, didn't run after work, and drove all the way home- just to find myself putting on my run clothes.  Then checking the gym.  Then putting on my shoes... and out the door I went.

Discipline is such an interesting beast.  But not gonna lie, definitely went home and ate half of that extra large pizza.  At least it felt earned!

PM: 9 miles

Noon: 10 miles