Back when I was a competitive cheerleader, we used to hope for a bad practice before the competition, because somehow that made us perform better when it actually counted. I might be reading too far into it, but I think the same sort of thing thing applies to our long runs– if a long run is good one week, it will not be the next week.

Last week was a dream. This week was, in a word, difficult. We ran almost the exact same course as last time, but both Em and I struggled today. There are any number of factors that can affect a run, but I’m blaming our great run last week.

“Your run can’t have been that bad!”

Wrong. Both Em and I (embarrassingly) had a few moments when we thought we might actually throw up. But we didn’t, because we are champions. But we struggled hardcore.

We did, however, made it our personal mission to let everyone in the vicinity know that although we looked like we had been hit by a train or two, it was because we had run nine and a half miles.