Good morning from hazy Los Angeles! It has been a crazy 24 hours since we arrived. As part of my job, I travel to different regions throughout the United States during the year to connect with our teams and get to know the region from a business perspective. It is always a great opportunity but definitely makes for long days! Since arriving in Los Angeles Wednesday afternoon we’ve been going non-stop! But, we’ve also had a blast!

• Dinner at an awesome local Cuban restaurant, Versailles!
• I have successfully run both days thus far, logging 16 miles in total!
• I saw the HOLLYWOOD sign and had a total tourist moment, shrieking in the car with my co-workers.
• We dined at Crustacean, seeing Vivica A. Fox and enjoying the most magnificent crab ever! I can’t wait to describe it in full!
• Enjoyed drinks in the swanky Bazaar Beverly Hills.

While I will certainly fill you in on all the dining details later in the week, right now I want to talk more about yesterday’s run. The post that went up yesterday was by mistake. I was working on it and then realized I only had five minutes until I needed to leave. Instead of pushing save I pushed publish. Ooops! Sorry about that! As I’ve done previously this marathon season, I tried to think of this trip out to Los Angeles as a challenge vs. a marathon training hurdle. I figured that if I embraced the challenge of traveling during the key training period I would be more successful in the long run. Therefore, with this attitude, I woke up at 4:45 yesterday morning ready to conquer the streets of Beverly Hills. Our very swanky hotel is located right on the border of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, therefore limiting the area in which I can run. However, my awesome co-worker was able to give me some suggestions after she saw my initial route I found on Daily Mile. The conversation went a little like this:

Let me see the route that you’re going to run tomorrow morning. Oh, don’t worry about it. I found it on this great running website so it should be great. No, Ashley let me see the route. You can’t just go running through the neighborhoods at that time in the morning. I need to make sure you’ll be okay. Oh hell no you’re not running this route. If you run this route you’ll definitely PR because you’ll be running the hell away from someone or something. Let’s alter this so you go down safe little roads like Wilshire and Rodeo.

Lesson learned. Even if you find a route online from a trusted website, always share it with either a hotel concierge, local friend or family member, or co-worker. Instead of the Daily Mile route, I planned to do a straight out and back down Wilshire Blvd which would take me straight through the heart of Beverly Hills. Thanks to the time change, I woke up at 4:45 alert and ready to go. I spent a few minutes stretching my tight hips, fueled with a Luna Bar, and headed out!

As you can tell from the pictures, it was still quite dark when I started my run.  My goal was to complete an out and bag 15 miler. My route would take me down Wilshire Boulevard, through the famous Rodeo Drive, and include a few challenging hills. I was happy to see that I wasn’t alone in my morning endeavor as other runners and walkers often passed.

The streets were lined with gorgeous, ornate lamp posts and overflowing hanging flower baskets! The first few miles flew by as I kept a steady 10:30 pace and enjoyed some running window shopping.

Around mile four I encountered this sign, which reminded me that I indeed was not in New York City anymore! I felt like Julia Roberts or Shelly Long from Troop Beverly Hills should turn the corner at any moment!

Unfortunately, around mile six my stomach quickly told me that Cuban and garlic are not good long run fuel combinations. I circled the Starbucks for ten minutes, awaiting the open sign.

After a five minute running hiatus, I started running again only to realize that this was not going to be a 15 mile long run. My hips were still very tight from six hours on a plane less than 24 hours previous and my stomach was in knots, refusing the shot blocks I was trying to use as fuel.

Instead of focusing on the pain, I turned off of Wilshire in search of new visual stimuli. I wanted to see how the locals lived, running down a quiet sidewalk through sprinklers, barking dogs, and power walkers.

A few miles later, I found Wilshire again and decided it was time to throw in the towel and head back to the hotel.

Twelve miles and a little more than two hours later, I finished my run feeling defeated, worried, and frustrated.

Why didn’t I push myself harder? What if I can’t finish the marathon this year? I have four more weekends of travel, what will I do?  Should I go back out and power through another three miles? What will my running coach say?

Plain and simple, failure sucks and the guilt we put on ourselves is even worse. It only took a few texts, Daily Mile inspirations, and tweets to realize that I should be okay with 12 miles. It wasn’t the 15 I’d hoped for nor the perfect Los Angeles run. But, I can still reach my weekly mileage goal and added another 4 miles on this morning, including one very speedy mile.

Question: How do you handle negative thoughts when you have to cut a workout short or miss it altogether?