Mental Toughness

It's hard to motivate yourself to get up early on a Saturday morning after a long working week.  It's even harder when that Saturday is the first day of the holiday and it's tipping it down with rain.  But get up we did and met at Sarah's parents house for a 16 miles run.
The schedule suggested running the first four miles at marathon pace.  Sylvia and I found ourselves running together, putting the world to rights and completed that section with splits of 9:58; 9:26: 9:34 and 9:33.  We stopped for a gather up just past 6 miles and took our gels at this point.  

Gel Stop

By now the rain was coming down even harder, but we were already soaked through so it didn't make a lot of difference.  We started talking about mental toughness, mainly disagreeing with a professional runner who had given a talk on the topic recently.  He had given up in a race when he realised that he wouldn't win it and therefore make money.  Obviously we're not in that league and are not likely to be, but consider ourselves to have some level of mental toughness.  We classed this as actually going out and running on a morning like this; running extra distance when your mates have stopped (Sarah did an extra mile); carrying on even if it takes you hours to finish a race.  Back runners everywhere - we salute your mental toughness!
We ran together until mile 12, when we stopped for another gel.  My plan at this point was to take my second gel at mile 14.  I usually take them in 7 mile stages so wanted to get into that routine.  Then it was time for our last four miles at marathon pace again.  The first mile counted the bit I walked whilst the others took gels so the time for that was 10:21.  I felt as if I had energy left and just ran, without really looking at my watch.  I was following road signs back so I knew when I'd reached 14 miles but felt okay, so didn't take my gel as I only had 2 miles to go.  The remaining splits were 9:00; 8:41 and 8:56.  I'm extra pleased with these as there were some decent hills in that section too.
The total run took me exactly 2hours 40minutes, which is an average pace of 10min/mile.  We felt very good climbing back in the car to come home, although I'll need to take the dog out for a decent walk later to prevent stiff muscles tomorrow!