Three Recovery Runs Since Quicksilver 50k

So I've taken it a little easy since the Quicksilver 50k 10 days ago. One good one and two bad ones. Can you have a negative training run or are all runs beneficial regardless of how you felt? Here's what I mean.

Run 1 was done 4 days after the 50k. I wanted to get out there and do a nice, easy run and settled on a 9 minute pace for 6 miles. This was a good run. A little slow, but everything felt good. All systems a go!

The second one was done 8 days after the 50k, or two days ago from today. This was my first mistake. I decided to sleep in and do a run I've done before under similar circumstances. What I did before was an experiment, and I did the same then, which was run 8 miles right after waking up without ingesting anything except water. No breakfast (or lunch as it would have it since I slept in and didn't get to the bike path until 11 AM), so no energy supply after waking up. It worked well before, although it got a little tough. This time, however, the weather was much worse. Starting temps were 95 and muggy, and I purposefully didn't bring water with me because there is a water fountain about every 2.4 miles. That was mistake #2, because it felt like I was sucking on cotton, and every time I spit a bright white piece of cotton would flutter out of my mouth and float in the air. It was tough. By the time I finished the 8th mile my miles went from a little over 8 minute pace to just under a 10 minute pace. So it was the wrong time to try and do this little experiment in such muggy and hot conditions.

My third run, which was today, was even tougher, and yet had the opposite of the second run in terms of food. This time I went and ate a big fat steak burrito and jumped the gun and went out for my run only a little over an hour after eating. I had set out to do a timed run of 2 hours, but with at least a minimum miles of 10 miles. The whole time it felt as though I had a brick in my midsection and it was so heavy and slow in running. To top it off I didn't want to make the same mistake as two days ago so I made sure and drank a lot of water, which continuously made my stomach full. And to make matters worse, this was my trail running day, so I was running some pretty serious hills, with close to 1,000 ft. elevation gain in the first 3 miles. I finally finished the 2 hour run and ran a total of 10.33 miles.

Three tough runs in their own unique way. One sore recovery run, one no food run, one too much food run. Each with their own lessons. And some decent mileage to boot.