18 weeks, 44 miles and a better understanding of how my body can influence my mind.

By the time I have written the blog entry for after the London to Brighton race, it will have been just over 2 years since I first started writing on this platform about training towards the 44 mile Grand Tour of Skiddaw. I have found the time I spend writing this quite enjoyable and definitely suffered through some tough training runs far better knowing I can write up about it afterwards.

I started this week with the same 4 miles on Tuesday morning and then 7.5 miles on Wednesday night and Thursday morning as last week. I took some of the Decibel Pre-workout drink before the last of these which made me slightly more of a morning person! It was -3 degrees C and I had to keep clenching and unclenching my fists as I was running to get some feeling in my fingers! The caffiene certainly helped me on this outing.

I did 5.4 miles on Saturday morning which was substantially easier. Daylight was a big factor and I felt the rest day on Friday was helpful too.

To finish the week I did 20.4 miles this morning which was 2 laps of my 7.5 mile loop and one of the 5.4 mile loop. I took some of the Decibel Nutrition Pre-workout at the start and before the last lap. As my source of motivation, I had watched a TEDtalk video last night by Amy Cuddy about “Presence”. This was interesting because it focused on how our bodies respond positively to displaying assertive body language and how this can influence our thoughts.

I tried to bear this in mind as I was running and adapt more confident posture than usual. It would be a lie to say this made a massive difference, but there was large parts of it where I found it easier. The allure for me of running for distances like that is knowing I will have to persevere through a few uncomfortable miles. I have included a quote from Amy Cuddy below.