I haven’t felt like blogging about running because, well just because. I’ve been plodding along doing my 45 minute maintenance runs and just getting on with it but it feels like a huge effort. I just want to go and do the bloody marathon now. Someone put me at the start line and I promise I won’t stop moving forward until someone hands me a medal, a beer and food – not necessarily in that order. Cheer me up by sponsoring me?
This morning was a bit of a fail. I got up and fell into my running gear. I read a silly mantra somewhere about running first thing before your body knows what’s happening – well that was me this morning. The plan was to run to the sheep, feed them etc and then continue and do 45 minutes. We got to the sheep and then I had a little panic attack over nothing at all. We walked home and I sulked, had pan au chocolat for breakfast and sulked some more. Then I thought about the run. We had got to the sheep in under 10 minutes per mile pace. That is insanely fast for us. It didn’t feel that fast though. So I decided to be positive and put this morning’s run down to an inadvertent speed session.
But it played on my mind. I can’t mentally cope with any run fails this close to the marathon. I need to keep positive and I need to keep convincing myself that I can do it. I knew I needed to go out again to take some stuff to mum’s…an idea formed and after a bit more sulking and reading loads of posts in a Facebook Group I joined I snapped out of it. I hadn’t got changed from the morning so I grabbed the backpack, filled it with empty tupperware boxes, a christmas card, some cash, my bus pass and some stuff I’d printed for mum and set off. It was hard. Really hard. I felt puffed from the start. I looked at the Garmin and saw that I was running at a silly pace ‘Slow down you maniac!’. The conversation in my head went something like this over the next 16 minutes:
‘You need to slow down, you can’t run 5 miles at this pace’
‘Haha -you can’t run 5 miles’
‘Yes I can’
‘But NOT AT THIS PACE’
‘Slow down you idiot’
‘What bit of slow down is too complicated for you, just go slower’
‘SLOW DOWN’
‘Oh shit I’m dying here’
‘I told you to slow down’
I hit 18 minutes and walked for a minute, then ran the next 2, then walked 1, then ran 3, then walked 1 and was then going to run 4 but a minute into that run just decided to keep going until the 3 miles beep came. Every time I set off running again I told myself to go slow. I walked for a minute when I hit three miles and then set off again ‘Go SLOW you stupid cow’. I walked for 90 seconds when I hit 4miles and set off again ‘Go Slow, just go… oh F-it just go at whatever idiotic pace you want’. I got to 5 miles. I had done it in just over 58 minutes – a faster pace than the pace I did all running the other day.
I was absolutely shattered, even more of a sweaty mess than usual and it took much longer for my heartrate to come down again. The walks had been slower than normal and the runs faster. But I just couldn’t make myself run slower. I walked the half mile to mum’s and had just about recovered enough to speak when I got there.
Now if only I was preparing for a 10km run – I reckon I could have done another 1.2 miles at the pace I was at and that would mean a new personal best by more than a minute. As for a marathon, having speedy legs really isn’t going to help.
really (not) a runner 