Grinding It Out

It's been a while since I had to dig deep in a training run to see it through to the end,for whatever reason today was one of those days.
Maybe the collective weight of 444 miles in the last 7 weeks caught up w/ me today?maybe the fact I have a race scheduled for tomorrow{rain permitting} forced me to take it down a level or two?or maybe just maybe I had one of those days where you just have to dig deep,grit your teeth and grind it out?

For once on a Saturday my run wasn't dictated by the Spurs kick off,we play tomorrow and I was on the road by 10.30am,even w/ the sun out there was a slight chill in the air and w/in the opening half a mile I found myself fishing out my gloves.
No worries having to detour around CSX freight trains today although I did have to switch sides of the road going over South St bridge,otherwise it was smooth sailing today.

Exiting Fairmount Waterworks w/ four miles to go I got my first"do I have the chops to finish this?"thought,I've experienced that on some of my recent 16 mile runs but not over anything shorter,however just like I've been able to grind out the last 10 miles of a 16 miler I had what it took to see off the final 4 miles even if I had to "work the lights" in my favour in the last three miles from South St bridge to home.

I'm hoping the rain will hold off tomorrow to allow me the chance to run the 15k xc in New York at Van Cortlandt Park,if it's pissing down at 6am when I wake up then the deal's off but as long as the weather is co operating in the early am I'll make my way to the Bronx to not only sign off my 7 week base mileage but also run my final race of the 2010 season.