Three Day Winter Weekend

Three day weekends are always awesome. That said, there's a huge difference between a three day weekend in the winter and the fall, spring, summer, basically any other time of the year.

Non-winter three day weekends usually look like this:

Heading out for a nice bike ride

Visiting local attractions

Or just wandering around town, taking in the sights we normally neglect on a day-to-day basis

It could even just be relaxing in the park

Ah yes. That would be your Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day weekends. Unfortunately MLK Day doesn't usually involve any of these wonderful things. Instead, it's pretty much made up of sleeping in, getting chores done, forcing myself outside into the bitter cold to get my miles in, and then hunkering down and refusing to leave the apartment for the rest of the time because it's just too damn miserable out. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be doing that then going to work, but it's really just not the same.

On Saturday I finally got my butt out the door to do my 10 miles. They went positively fantastic complete with negative splits and an average 8:30 pace, which is great considering I had just run a 50k seven days before.

On Sunday it was even colder outside with highs in the low 20s. I was determined to get up to Forbidden Drive, however, and get some trail training in.

Yay so cold!

It took me a solid 2 miles to completely warm up. Quite frankly it was pretty miserable. It was the kind of cold where you have trouble breathing and you can't feel your ass for the whole 10 miles. But I didn't have super high expectations for this run. I just wanted to be out on the trails taking it as slow as I needed/wanted.

At the half way point my stomach started acting up. I felt so slow and sluggish. I almost wanted to quit which, with the exception of last weekend's race, is not a feeling I usually have. I forced myself to tough it out and Mike stuck with me. We ended up finishing with horribly positive splits and an average 9:30 pace. What a difference from Saturday eh?

The point is, they can't all be great or even good runs. You will have "off" days and they will challenge you. It's up to you to make sure you get out there again and #makeitcount.

How do you deal with a bad run?