lots and lots of miles

So I did 32 miles this week, over half of them were all done in ONE BIG 18-MILER on Saturday. 32 miles is a new week record for me, and so is 18 miles in terms of long runs. I'm pretty proud of both! My only two big hurtles left are the two 20 miles runs that I have (one in two weeks, the other in four).

The 18 miles was... interesting. I decided that instead of doing a big loop I would take the metro out as far as I could and run home. This meant literally taking the metro OFF THE ISLAND of Montreal early on Saturday morning, and zigzagging a very long ways home. I decided to make a little map for anyone who is interested...

The red star is where I took the metro too... and the dotted line is an (approximate) path of where I ran all the way home, to Peel.
I took a lot of time preparing for this run, I drew out a map of all of the roads to turn on and carried it with me in my WATER BOTTLE BELT (and proceeded to lose it once, having to jog back and retrace my steps to find it). I also carbo-loaded on baked penne the night before, and even brought one of those running gels that are just a straight shot of 100-150 calories of carbs with me... I'd never tried them before but ended up eating the raspberry one at about mile 8. Despite all of this though, something about the run just wasn't good. Maybe  I didn't mentally prepare enough or something... but my mood just wasn't right for the entire thing. I didn't want to be out there running for so long, and I didn't find myself taking joy in the new sights I was seeing or the constant rhythm that I so often take pleasure in while running alone for a long time.
It's okay though, I'm not discouraged. Out of this entire training period which has consisted of at least 60 runs now, I really think that this is only the second one that I haven't felt too good about. I'll take a 97% success rate!!

Even better though, is despite being very sore and tired after that 18 miles for most of Saturday, I went on an easy 3-miler today (Sunday) and felt like I was flying.