Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend! Ours was filled mainly with chores, but we were able to get out to see the new Mission Impossible movie and it was SO good. It was really long, so be prepared (I think it's 2.5 hours long) and our theater was busy (even with a Saturday matinee!). Has anyone else seen this movie? What did you think? Tom Cruise also did ALL the stunts in the movie, which honestly was mind-boggling to me throughout the entire thing. He must have been in such good shape! 

So let's chat about my long run on Saturday. I had 12 miles at a moderate pace (8:12-8:53) on the schedule. I'm not really sure why I didn't do a cut-back week between last week and this week (I normally never have 2 back-to-back long runs), so I knew going into it that this typically wouldn't happen. I also noticed on my watch that I had 100 days until Vegas (yay)! So, with knowing that I crushed my long run last week and had still quite a bit of time before my race (along with just not feeling "into it"), I wasn't overly stressed. 

I got to 3 miles and had to stop. My breathing was fine, my plantar fasciitis wasn't bothering, but something just felt "off". 

I decided to take a break for a minute, give myself a little bit of a pep talk, and told myself that I could do this. I just crushed every other run this week, so this should be considered 'easy'. I unpaused my garmin and took off again along the dirt path down by the lake. 

5 miles in, I just wasn't feeling it. I couldn't get "into" the zone. 

I started to feel a bit disappointed, but then I felt silly. Why was I putting so much pressure on myself to keep doing this when it just wasn't fun or relaxing today? I still had more than enough time and honestly never felt like I was breathing heavily, so my fitness clearly still is really great. 

I decided to give myself some grace- I stopped my watch at 6 miles and walked it home. 

I'm not disappointed that I didn't get my mileage in. I'm actually pretty proud that I noticed how I was feeling and rather than continue to push through a run that wasn't enjoyable (not because it was 'hard'), I decided that there are other things in my life that I can give my energy to on this day. 

It's just one run. It's not going to make or break my attempt at PR in November. It definitely could have pushed me to an injury or burn-out, which is why I decided to throw in the towel. 

I'll have another opportunity at a long run in 2 weeks, but until then I've mainly got easy miles and a few tempo/speedwork sessions to get in. 

How do you know when to call it quits on a run?

Would you have kept going or thrown in the towel?

Tom Cruise: yay or nay?