9 weeks left, 7 training runs, 2 “twice a day"s and a new found respect for road awareness

This week was a severe lesson in pain management and being perseverant when you really don’t feel like it. Last week I had brought my 34 mile run forward a week due to working this weekend. The plan at the start of the week was to do 50 miles from 6 training runs. As usual my best laid plans went awry.

My 2 training runs on Tuesday went to plan and I felt relatively comfortable during both sessions. The only time I was caught by surprise was when a “mobile hairdresser” car didnt stop when I was half way across the zebra crossing. The fact she was texting at the wheel didn’t brighten my mood!

On Wednesday my hip was a bit rigid at the gym but the addition of the 400m hills in each mile helped because of the focus on different muscle groups for that time.

I decided to curtail my run on Thursday morning from 10.8 to 5.4 miles. This was because I felt my hip “locking out” for each hill on the 1st lap of the usual route near my house and didn’t want to any serious damage by continuing if it was injured. There is a good quote from NFL player Justin Tuck that I try to remember when I think I may be overdoing it

“ There’s a difference between playing hurt and playing injured”

Following this, I gave myself the rest of the day off and decided to try a slower pace the next day.

This didn’t end up being the case. I had planned to do 10.8 miles each day on Friday and today but the weather changed quite drastically on my 2nd lap of my usual loop on Friday. I normally speed up if it starts to rain heavily or becomes overly hot. It probably wasn’t any change in temperature but I certainly noticed it wasn’t overcast any more.

I decided about 3 hours after I got back on Friday to do another lap and only do one lap today. This would mean I’d be less rushed before work. Because it had clouded over again there was less of a struggle to settle in to my usual pace.

The run was quite comfortable and other than being put off halfway up the main hill by some oik using an air horn from the back seat of a car as they drove past in the opposite direction, I felt I could sustain the pace of my previous 2 laps. At the top of the hill I joked with someone who had been working on trees as I passed him for the 3rd time in 5 hours that I hadn’t got my fill yet.

The final 5.4 miles of this week this morning were quite grim. Similar to Thursday the hardest steps were the first ones out the door. I couldn’t really settle into a rhythm at any point and despite trying to go up the main hill a bit faster than usual, my heart rate was nowhere near the target % of my max that I aim to train at.

Overall I am happy that I managed to reach over 44 miles for this week. I’m pleased about having forced myself to start a run on 2 occasions when I could have very easily not bothered and convinced myself I was being cautious this close to a race.

One mind management way of looking at the race is as seperate smaller races between each checkpoint, the training runs I found harder this week will be good to look back on during the race as there will undoubtably be sections I find easier than others. This should help me maintain the “heart in the oven, head in the fridge” mentality I’ll need when the race seperates the men from the boys.