April May be alright.
Two runs have kicked off April in reasonable-enough style. The first was another of those 'Gosh, where did that come from?' outings that began as a thought to do just half an hour of 'show up and save face' plodding, but which instead astonishingly yielded a solid 15.7km tempo run. And then yesterday, arriving home so tired that I simply wanted to fall on the bed and faint into a deep, abiding comatose state of near-death, I instead laced up the runners and somehow toughed out another 12.5km. Slow and unimpressive it was, but deeply satisfying for having been completed. It also left me buzzing and wide awake for another two hours before the crashing tide of fatigue overtook me and I gratefully fell into a decent night's sleep.
This is becoming almost routine of late. I'm generally pretty tired from the amount of running I've been doing in recent weeks, but just as your dog always knows the way home, when I put my tired body in running kit, it seems to know what to do by itself, taking off and completing the kilometres in even an apparently exhausted state. It is, it must be said, most gratifying and perhaps further evidence for the claim that fatigue is mostly in the mind and can be overcome.
Well, we shall see about that. This is my long week of the fortnightly cycle I'm currently working, which is to say my six-day, 60-hour week. Through March these proved difficult, with one cancelled run and another cut short because of the hours and subsequent fatigue. If yesterday proved anything, it shows that it's still worth lacing up the shoes and giving it a go anyway, no matter how tired I feel. All too often it yields a huge surprise and a big jolt of endorphin-fuelled bliss.
The rough plan for this month is to bolster my base-building with an increased number of tempo runs and some tougher hill climbs. The distance covered may be a little less than last month, but with an emphasis on better quality runs, that's not a problem. Anyhow, it's not much of a plan, but it will have to do. The daily routine of general mayhem that passes as my working life still takes precedence, and running fits in where it can.
Now, excuse me while I have a short kip.
April May be alright.
