My troubled 8 mile run!

I've been training for a half marathon for the last couple months. It's my second. Like the last time I trained for a half, I'm suffering with yet another knee injury. It's a total bummer. Last week we where on mile 12 of training. It was tough, to say the least. My feet went numb at mile 8 (thanks to the new shoes I was fitted for that didn't quite fit), my knee was screaming out in pain and my quad was none to happy either. At the end of that run not only was my body a wreck but I came really close to fainting. I tend to lose a lot of salt during long runs AND since I'm so not a morning person I was running late that morning and only had dry toast before the 12 miles. Not smart. Anyway, I got through the 12 miles. This week we were going down in miles, yay! :-). Unfortunately, after waking up at 5:30 (our long runs start at 6:30 am Saturday mornings), washing my face and eating breakfast, I crawled back into bed. I told myself  'oh, it's just 8 miles, I can do that on my own later today'. Big mistake, big big mistake. My first mistake, thinking I'd be okay running 8 miles alone. It's just not fun. Second mistake, thinking it's a good idea to run 8 miles at 12 noon in the middle of August when you live in the Washington, DC area. It was hot, hot hot!!! It was a disastrous run. More like a run/walk. Took me a 2 full hours just to run 8 miles. I'm usually a 10/11 minute pacer. Today, in the heat? My best pace was 14 minutes. So, what did I learn from today's awful 8 mile run? It's no fun doing long runs alone and it's never a good idea to run at 12 noon during the summer when the heat and humidity are extremely high. I came home, guzzled tons of water, stretched(I'm so proud of myself because I'm awful when it comes to stretching) and crawled back into my bed, didn't even bother taking a shower. Slept for 2 hours! Next week the miles increase again so, no getting back in bed for me. I'll be there at 6:30 a.m having had a reasonable breakfast of course.

The Good:
1. I did it, even though I didn't want to

The Bad:
1. Hot as hell!
2. Doing a long run on my own

The Ugly:
1. Being so wiped out, I crawled into bed w/out showering