11.20 miles (to be precise) in the cold rain was very hard

Today's scheduled long run was 11 miles.  I ran 11.20 miles at the Shoe Factory Road Forest Preserve.  I dressed for a cold and dry day.  I ended up with a cool but very wet morning instead.  The combination of the distance and the cold rain made today's run very hard.

This is the route I ran:


I felt great on the "out" leg of the run (I run out to the halfway point of my planned run and the run back "in").  There was an intermittent mist all morning, but by the time I got turned around and was only about 1/2 mile into the "in" leg the mist became a steady rain and that rain continued for a solid 30 minutes.

The rain made my run harder.  I was wearing a knit hat on my head.   That's not a great choice of headgear as the cotton hat was water-logged within minutes.  I wore a cotton henley long-sleeve on top of my cold weather Under Armor long sleeve mock turtleneck shirt.  Again, it was water-logged within minutes.  My shoes and socks were soaked pretty quickly once the heavy rain started coming down.

The clothing became heavier with the water and this certainly played a role in making the run more difficult.  But as I look back on this morning's run I think the rain hurt me the most by breaking my focus and distracting me.  I should have tried harder to remain focused.  Instead of focusing on my running form and my speed and thinking about the importance of every training day leading up to the half marathon (that's a little mantra I have: "make every training day count!"), I let myself think about how cold and miserable I was.  That was dumb.  I started worrying that my wet feet would blister.  I started worrying that I'd catch a cold.  Dumb and dumber still.

I finished the run but I was dragging during the last 2.5 miles.  It should have finished the run in about 2 hours and a few minutes.  Instead, it took me 2 hours and 15 minutes.  Ugh.

I'm not beating myself up over the time.  I'm not deluding myself into trying to work on speed already.  Rather, I'm upset that (1) I didn't prepare properly for the weather, and (2) I allowed myself to lose focus.  If I would have worn a water-repellant jacket (I have one) and remained focused on the mechanics of my running I would have had a much better training day.

Today was a great hands-on lesson in the power of focus and on the mental aspect of an athletic endeavor.  I'm convinced that my negative thoughts played a significant role in the slower and more painful second part of my morning run.  I'll try to learn from today's experience and find a way to avoid the same mistake in the coming weeks.