Schleptember

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

On your marks...

A half marathon doesn't generally warrant a 20-week training plan, but as I've no other race on the calendar and am desperately keen to find some form and fitness again over our summer, it seems appropriate. The Almeria Medio Maraton is, therefore, twenty weeks hence, which makes today day one of week one. Most training programs will have Monday as a rest day, even in the first week (well, you need a day to stock up on baked goodies I suppose), but my schedule is rather more dictated to by the variances of shift work, and so today is a scheduled run day. And run I did, and it went pretty well, really.

I had just completed a six-day work week yesterday, complete with long hours, insomnia and two days of lurgi which interrupted the pre-training schedule program somewhat, such as it was. I was keen therefore to kick off this week with a decent run just to reset the internal running body clock, as it were.

So after a decent night's sleep (yay!), a long lie-in and a lengthy morning sit in the sun catching up on the weekend newspapers, I changed into the running kit and hit the treadmill for a slow, easy 8km. In fact, I turned it into a rather modest tempo run, building to something approaching a decent training pace, but without any undue exertion. After all, this was just a run designed to get things back into gear again following a shitty week with just two not-so-successful early morning outings.

The run went very well, and I was even able to fool myself into thinking I was something of a runner again, although the pace and distance were, of course, modest. Never mind, it felt great and that's the thing.

I have too many friends and colleagues of a similar age to myself struggling at the moment to find even average health and fitness, and it reminds me all too frequently how I constantly struggle now to stay upright and balanced on the greasy pole that is the healthy lifestyle. Just a short break from running now requires an ever-longer and increasingly painful and difficult return to what I consider an acceptable level of fitness, and so I try to persist. It's never easy, but as I keep telling myself, it's always worthwhile.

Go.