Two Long Runs: Bad and Good

After a "different" style of long run for me 2 weeks ago followed by a snappy track day, I was ready for last week's long run to be great. But it wasn't. It was preparing to storm, so it was possibly worse because of the weather/humidity, but it just wasn't fun. Instead of 6 miles "at pace" in the middle around 6:15 pace or so, I was only able to muster 4.5 miles at 6:22 pace. I just never felt good, and it was a bit of a bummer.

But then yesterday's long run (moved up by a day because today is HOT) went pretty well! I didn't have too many expectations (and that tends to be when runs/races go well for me), and I finished pretty happy about life. Here's what I posted on Twitter yesterday afternoon:

I was camping in WI with my in-laws, and my wife actually headed home the day before as she had (and is still working through) some GI issues. I tend to not sleep in when we're camping, so I was up a little after 5 a.m. and running around 5:30. I ended up running 11.53 miles with the middle 6 at 6:20 pace, and the first few of those middle 6 felt GREAT.

My long runs at home have about 200-some feet of elevation change
(not the 600 shown here), so it was a nice hilly change!

And when I got back just before 7 a.m., all of my extended family was still out, and so were my boys:

I actually got a lot of our stuff packed up outside the tent before the boys were up. And then I packed a lot of our things inside the tent as Henry stayed passed out during most of that process!

I'll maybe have some camping and canoeing photos in the next few days. Happy belated Father's Day! :)