What's going on here then...?
An experiment.
I've hit a bad patch, and am trying to kick my own backside -- never a very easy operation.
When I don't run, I don't write. Which is no good. I think one of the obstacles is opening up the HTML editor and doing all the fiddly things I have to do. It has to be admitted that it's not that big a deal really, but I use it as an excuse. I tuen it into an impediment. So I thought I'd post here instead -- at least for a while -- and can always transfer stuff to the 'front page' later. It's easier and quicker to get stuff down here.
Also, I've become increaingly conscious in recent months that most of the good stuff is written here on the forum in any case. Just look at Sweder's race reports and descriptions of his humdrum runs, or MLCM's latest epic, or pretty much anything else, and you'll have to agree.
So what's gone wrong?
As usual, my stupidity has turned an enforced break into something much worse. Last weekend I was in Manchester, enjoying too much Champagne and Timothy Taylor's Landlord, and barbecued animal. I returned without a weekend long run to log in my spreadsheet, and with extra corporeal ballast to lug around the mean streets of West Berkshire.
That was bad enough, but worse was a painful toe that gave me the excuse I needed to take a few days off. This was then compounded by a dose of man-flu that no one has been very sympathetic about. Huh!
Man, it's so comfortable in this swamp. It's warm and moist and green and comfy, and you meet interesting creatures here. They even have a bar with beer and wine and crisps and cheese....
But hang on, I'm sinking.... Help! I'm sinking I tell you...! Help!!! .......
HELP!!!
gloop -- gloop -- glurrupp!
Most of us seem a bit down at the moment. Inertia oozes from these pages. Why? I don't know. What I do know is that I have to shake out of it, and fast. I recently updated my profile on the Runners World website, changing the answer to the question of how long I'd been running, from "1-5 years" to "5 to 10 years". This reinforced my suspicion that I'd been doing this for quite a while now. Long enough to have been here many times before. Long enough to know that every marathon campaign has the odd down week. As the well-known observation goes, don't judge on whether someone has problems, but on how they respond to them.
This is a problem I need to respond to. And I will.
I'm probably well enough to run now, but I won't. Not this evening, anyway. I'm still a bit bunged up but the cold is on its way out. The toe seems to have stopped shouting at me. I don't know if it was a hangover from the jolt it got when I went over in Bracknell Forest a few weeks ago, or if it was a recurrence of gout which has come and gone over the past 8 years or so. I hardly ever get it these days, and it's usually even more painful than it was a day or two ago, so I tend to favour the Bracknell option. A bit worrying. I can't afford to have this hanging around all summer, glowing on and off as the mood takes it.
But anyway, I need to get out for a couple of runs before the end of the weekend. Let's see how I feel tomorrow.
Please bear with me.
