Only a week into my programme, and already I find myself in a trough. After last week’s fate-tempting sense of triumph, it was perhaps inevitable that on Sunday’s long run I’d get the chest pains again; that on Monday I’d unexpectedly go down with crisps-and-chocolate-fever, and that just a mile into this morning’s run, I’d suddenly get a sharp stab of pain in my left calf, and have to limp back home.
I’ve not been very good about warming up and warming down, and doing stretching exercises in the evening in front of the TV, and glugging water all day, and all those other things that everyone says you should do, and which seem very easy, but that in fact are strangely hard. And up to now I’ve thought that perhaps they don’t matter much after all. Hmm. Perhaps they really are important.
12 hours after the injury, the calf still aches, and I can’t walk without a pronounced limp. Tomorrow I’m out all day. Perhaps tomorrow evening I might be ready for another go. In the meantime I’m feeling fat and bloated and unfit and not up to the job. Perhaps I’ll have to do what many sources of advice have been telling me: forget an April marathon. Work up to it over an extended period, and do a marathon in a year’s time, or wait till London 2003.
Pshaw! At the moment, things are not looking great, but it’s too early to fall victim to such defeatism. I need to take it easy for a day or two, then get back on course.
