Mental running

The weeks seem to be flying in and this week I had 2 days off during the week - luxury.   This was much appreciated by my body and helped as I visited the physio and had my calf taped up.  That was after an hour of eye watering massage on my calf.  I've got other appointments booked to make sure my calf behaves to help stabilise my foot which was sore after this weekends efforts.
Yesterday I headed up to the Arrochar Alps with Stuart and we tackle 3 mountains including the Cobbler.  At the top of the mountain there is a stack - in the stack is a hole called the "eye of the needle".  You have to climb through this onto a ledge and work your way around the stack and climb up on top.  There is a sheer drop of I'd guess at least 1,000 ft but I didn't have the bottle to do it.  Maybe one day. We then headed off to conquer another couple of summits.  From the top of the last summit to the carpark at the bottom was a 55 minute downhill run.  Tricky conditions and every footstep was a potential ankle break so I had to be careful, especially with an unstable foot.  No running poles to help steady me as the race doesn't allow them and I have to practise without them.
As we headed down the trail at pace some of the walkers passed comments such as "respect" and "well done" but the best was "you boys are mental" - said in a positive way of course.
So we are mental runners but that really isn't news when I consider what we put ourselves through.  It was 4 hours of hard work and as I was only meant to do 3 and it should have been on the Sunday but I switched sessions due to the weather forecast.
Having completed such a hard session I knew my schedule was to run fast for an hour but hoped my coach would change that to a recovery run.  To my surprise this morning, she'd switched it to 2 hour run!  This was a test of my resolve.  I had to immediately reset my goal for the session.
As I was running alone I plugged in some music to keep me company.  I knew my quads would be complaining and hoped I'd make it round without too much discomfort.  I ran 22km on feel, rather than pace or heart rate, and felt strong.  My Garmin told me that I'd completed my fastest half marathon this year in I hr 54 min, despite having shredded quads!  Result.
The back to back long runs are essential to building the strength, both physical and mental, and it just shows that if I "dial in the mileage" to my head my body will deliver.  A big 7 weeks of training to go but this weekend was definitely some mental running!