Warning: Train Wreck Alert! Do not read if you're looking for soft fluffy clouds and golden streams of love and happiness! Lol! Actually, today's run was a good learning experience.

 No long tempo run for me today. Excuses: 1) Not sleeping well at all this week, capped with maybe 3-4 hrs. of broken sleep last night. 2) Heat, 3) 6500 ft altitude? would that make a difference? It's about 2,000 ft. higher than my runs here at home. 4) Cumulative fatigue.

When my alarm went off at 5:00 this morning I had gotten maybe an hour or two of broken sleep. The reasons are not important. So, I went to plan B, which was to try and get a couple of more hours of sleep, then drive up to Wanship and run on the rail trail (this is the same rail trail that starts in Park City). I was hoping it would be substantially cooler up there, but nay. It was over 80F when I started, and around 87F when I finished. It felt hot.

The plan was to run 8 miles easy before doing 10 miles at MP (8:30) then a couple of miles cooldown to make 20. Not too much to ask for, just too many hits against me today. The good news is, these are all factors within my control, so basically, I made several rookie mistakes which added up to - failure. Anyway, the 8 miles went great, I took it real easy and felt good when I got back to the van to refill my water bottle and continue on the other direction. Mile 9, the first tempo mile, was a struggle for me at 8:58. So I knew it wasn't happening as planned. Still, I thought I could go 20 and maybe get at least a couple of MP miles in there. But the rest of the run was a struggle, I think the lack of sleep and the increasing heat just made things worse, so I wisely cut it off at 16 miles and called it a day.

Rookie mistakes and solutions:

1 - get control of my sleep patterns. I tend to think too much in the middle of the night, and get worked up over things (like the impending workout the next day). This solves nothing, whereas sleep would be a much more productive use of the hours between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM.

2 - Get up and do the run early if it's going to be a hot day. A no brainer, but a concept I seem to be struggling with.

3 - Plan better for water. Today I thought my little 16 oz. bottle was going to be enough for the last 12 miles of what was supposed to be a 20 mile run. You'd think I'd never done this before.

4 - Stay positive during the run in spite of the wheels not only falling off but shattering into tiny little pieces. I wasted a lot of mental energy during the run getting down on myself for flailing around like a moron, when I should have found positive things to focus on/work on during the run.

I'm exaggerating a little I'm sure.

PM edit: Watching the classic "Annie Hall" on PBS. Yes, I live large.