July 2011

[Charliecat5]

My head and body are not in the right place… I have really struggled with my running over recent weeks and it boils down to a number of reasons:

+ Work has been manic. Lots of travelling, late nights and endless hours in airports has taken its toll – I am feeling exhausted.

+ The pressure of work has meant that I’ve not been out on the trails as much as normal which has hit my general fitness levels.

+ My diet has been appalling, bordering on disgraceful! Work dinners, lack of the green stuff and slipping back into the world of crisps, bread and peanut butter has not done me any favours – and I haven’t mentioned the alcohol yet!

+ The grog… where do I start… or more to the point, when do I stop. I have stretched the BMR to its limit in recent weeks.

+ And this is just the physical stuff… mentally it has been challenging as well. My main man Sweder was just starting to ramp up his running when a dodgy knee and travel commitments has put him back on the bench for the foreseeable future. This has left me without mi hombre denting my motivation.

+ Running Commentary is unusually quiet – what are you all doing? Whatever it is, it’s clearly not running related. The lack of stuff going on has also dented my motivation… IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT.

So after a couple of challenging runs over the last 10 days I decided to go out alone for a big one this morning. I had 13 miles in mind and even stayed off the grog last night to experience that strange old feeling of running without a hangover.

At 7:30 I woke to the sound of rain steadily falling on the conservatory roof and decided to have an extra hour in bed as Metcheck said last night that the rain would cease by 8:30. And sure enough it did. So by 8:45 I was dressed, jelly babies loaded and out the door. Of course, following my dietary pattern of recent weeks I didn’t have any breakfast before I left, stupidly believing that I would make it round on JBs alone (and to be fair I did… in a fashion).

As normal when setting off for a longer run I tried to hold back my pace for the first few miles; and in the main this was successful. The tracks were lovely after the rain with the fresh morning smell reminding me of early mornings in the Lake District and before long I was soaked from brushing against tall grasses, nettles, brambles and low hanging branches but it was lovely.

Then in reasonable time I made it to the top of Blackcap. And for the first time in quite a few weeks I was up there alone… no Sweder, no OutAlongTheRiver (aka Rob), just me and my own thoughts. At least I didn’t have to share my JBs!

But I was also feeling buggered. My legs were reasonably OK, but generally my body felt exhausted. However, I was determined; there was absolutely no cutting this short… the only way was onwards.

The next section took me south and east onto the South Downs Way and downhill for a couple of miles. But frustratingly I just couldn’t pick up any reasonable speed; it was just a plod, one foot in front of the other, all the way down to the bottom of Heart Attach Hill. I did manage to run up HAH without stopping, halting briefly at the top for a couple of JBs before cruising down to the A27 and the Housedean crossing. At this point I was mullered, but as the choice was either a three mile trudge back along the A27 or to carry on over the Downs, I elected to carry on. There was no way I was going to run along the road.

So I hit the Relentless Bastard. When I say ‘hit’ I mean I gave it a gentle poke; when I say ‘gentle poke’, I doubt it even noticed I was there. I managed to get two thirds of the way up before it all got too much and I had to stop and lie down. After five minutes and at risk of falling asleep I eased my weary body back into a vertical position again and slowly made it to the top of the Bastard.

I knew at this point that going for the 13 miles was not a sensible plan, so instead of heading down Castle Hill I turned east to head back home via Kingston. So after a quick word to myself about hunkering down and making the most of the last couple of miles I set off again with a spring in my step (yep, if you looked really closely, there was a tiny spring there) until I was over taken by one of those soddin’ crazy bean pole runners who left me staggering in his wake. Still it was all downhill now as I headed down to Kingston Ridge (when the bastard overtook me again – he did apologise) over Juggs Lane back home.

I was absolutely buggered and the run came to an end without that usual feeling of euphoria. The fabulous progress I made in the first half of June seems to have dissipated. Time to grab hold of my life I think and focus on the things that matter.

10.86 miles, average moving pace of 9:53 min/mi… but over 20 minutes rest time.

Onwards and upwards.