Breakthru

This morning I ran my last 5K of the year, and it was my no means my easiest.
I've run the Blue Mitten run in West Hartford for the last 3 years, as long as it's been around, and every year it has grown; this year's race crowd was easily double if not triple the size of last year.  Other than that, what set this year's race apart from the past ones, was the foggy chilly weather, and the fact that I was running it alone.  This was a real bummer, but, I'd recent run MRR by myself, and I survived.
I had an awesome night with some friends last night, but right before bed, I really wasn't feeling good, and I still wasn't feeling so great this morning.  This made the thought of just not going to this race today all the more appealing.
Right, so back to that big crowd that was there today.  For whatever reason, Hartford Marathon Foundation was either woefully understaffed or disorganized to handle that many registered runners, which caused the race to start about half an hour late.  Standing in the cold foggy weather all that time, after already feeling that I didn't want to be there put me in a further negative mindset.
So, for those of you who don't do it, running is really just as much of a mental exercise as it is a physical one.  I don't think I've been reminded of this as much as I was this morning.  So much about the day was really working against any desire I'd initially had to run today, and yet, I muddled through.
Music definitely helped.

I don't really know why, I've heard this song lots and lots of times, but for some reason this helped snap me out of it today.
Because the crowd was so big, I started out at a slow pace, and I seemed to stay at it throughout; as I hit the first mile marker, I was pretty disheartened to see that the clock read 12 minutes.  But then I just decided to keep running, and see if I could get to mile 2 without walking, and I actually ended up making it the whole way.   My pace must have been pretty steady because my finish time was 36 minutes.
I've definitely run 5K's in much better time, but all in all, I can find some gratitude in the fact that I even ran it at all.  And, as tough as it is, in one aspect, I did this better than I did last year; in that I didn't stop to walk at all.
 So yeah, all in all, I guess it wasn't such a bad note to end another year of running.
And it seemed pretty relevant to see this shortly after the race today.

Who else runs?  What do you like about it?  How do you overcome the challenges of it?