Month: March 2004

Oh dear. I’ve not been too well recently. At least I think I haven’t. I’ve been exhausted. Too exhausted to do a long run yesterday (though I did force myself out for a brief loosener in the early evening). This is two consecutive weekends without a longie. Oh God, my universe is imploding, and everything I ever held dear has vanished in the blink of an eye.… READ MORE.... …

A listless, gloomy day. Am I ill? Or just mildly hungover? I found myself in the company of three thousand unkempt warriors from Luton this afternoon. This is rarely an uplifting experience. We should have beaten them too, but they equalised with 15 minutes left. One of those games that must have been exciting for a neutral, but to be a participant (even a passive participant, as it were) was hellish.… READ MORE.... …

Crikey, my arse hurts — but the only indiscretion I’m confessing to is three tough early morning runs in the last three days. Yesterday’s effort was the author of today’s discomfort — a routine, short plod that turned into a 9 miler (with extra hills please…). I set out yesterday to run four or five miles along the canal, but I plodded myself into some kind of trance that trundled me not back along the A4 as planned, but across it, and down a quiet wooded lane that winds for a few miles through a tract of forest before looping back to the village.… READ MORE.... …

A grand morning for an early run. Bright and vibrant even at 6:15, and the wildlife beginning to venture into the newly-sprung Spring at last. I was fed up with that last, listless week, but it seems Hal Higdon is right about the need for rest and recovery. This morning I was awake and eager again, and felt comfortable running my first sub-ten minute miles for a while.… READ MORE.... …

My running week has been a disaster. Since last Sunday’s half marathon, I’ve had two brief early morning runs of 3½ miles each. And that’s it. Through the week, I clung onto the excuse that I was exhausted from the last two weekends, knowing that the Cranleigh 15 miler today, or the long canal run I thought I might do yesterday in its place, would let me off the hook.… READ MORE.... …

Some interesting messages in the forum recently, mentioning the impact of races on a training schedule. I can understand the sentiments. Even a tortoise like me, who strains every slow twitch fibre to avoid expending too much effort, gets wiped out by these events. The excitements of the last two weekends have exhausted me. I went for a laid-back run early on Tuesday, but was hamstrung by pain up the back of my thighs, and have had to take a couple of days off to make sure I’m recovered properly.… READ MORE.... …

B-boom… B-boom… B-boom… Two or three miles into the Bath Half Marathon, I began to hear my heart pounding. Perhaps I was warming to the race at last, or perhaps I was just… warming at last. Or was I about to die…? B-boom… B-boom… B-boom… The sound was even louder now, and eventually I realised it wasn’t my heart that was beating at all, but the heart of the race.… READ MORE.... …

Sometimes you feel like it and sometimes you don’t. Tomorrow there’s a half marathon to do, but I seem strangely unconcerned about it. It’s as though I haven’t got round to mentioning it to myself yet. I’ll have to start panicking soon, or I’ll be in trouble. I’ve also discovered that the motorway is closed in the morning, so I have to dive into rural Berkshire and Wiltshire for a while, in the hope of resurfacing somewhere down Avon way.… READ MORE.... …

It’s been a tenacious winter. Wednesday’s warm, sunlit run had become, this morning, a bleak, snow-encrusted slog. It went from this: to this: Both were hugely enjoyable. As can be seen, I was trying out my new camera, so neither run was very fast. More pictures from this morning’s run can be found here. These two outings were thought-provoking, as my later notes show.… READ MORE.... …

And so to Bath. It’s easy to forget, when planning future races, just how much emotional fuel gets burnt around an event. During the peak times – spring and autumn – it’s tempting to enter two or three races in quick succession, always underestimating the time it takes to repair yourself, to refuel, and to refocus. After last spring’s congested calendar, I did promise myself not to enter two races on successive weekends, but here I am, on my way to the Bath Half just a week after Silverstone, and onto the 15 mile Cranleigh race the weekend after that.… READ MORE.... …