The honeymoon is over

(Written Friday 9^th)

I haven’t written for a while, and partly because my blogging is like my running pretty blghh & pretty intermittent at the moment.  I’ve been slacking.  My last may have conveyed a hint of blghh, well that has kind of continued.

I had a weekend off running because I was away, the week leading up to that, I skipped a run (well not technically, I had done three runs that week) but I did intend to squeeze one in before jetting off for the weekend, but quite frankly I couldn’t be bothered a opted for a sleep in instead.  When I came back I diligently got back to it on the Monday but on the Wednesday another heatwave had hit, and I made a new rule, no running in anything above 23 degrees (which will apply again this week, seriously, it’s been the longest summer ever! If I wasn’t training, I bet it would be cold and wet every day!).  But if I’m honest maybe the running honeymoon is over, I’m getting a bit tired of it, I’m less bothered if I miss a run. 

But the problem is getting back to running after missing runs is way harder.  It takes me back to most of this year, when a ‘bad run’ would knock my confidence, and would result in not running for a few weeks, then struggling to get back out there, followed by another bad run and so on, which is partly why I’ve been so strict with my three runs a week regime.  I think the other thing is that I’ve been putting so much pressure on myself to meet my milage, to get faster (not that I am) and spending hours analysing my stats.

So after my weekend off, I was really really nervous about going for a run, in case those 4 days off had resulted in my body forgetting how to run, and returning to it’s June state of not being able to run for 4 minutes, it was a scary thought.

Thankfully though it turned out I could still run and managed a good 5 miles (including hills).

Then Wednesday came and went (in 30 degrees) and without a run.  And Friday run time came.  This time my apathy was different, I’d had a horrible week and I couldn’t face putting pressure on myself to run, I just wanted a pressure free run, so I did something completely different.  I switched off Nike, set my phone timer to 1hr 10 and headed off into the park. There would be no pace pressure, no milage pressure, no stats to look back on after, and beat myself up over,  just run as fast/slow as I wanted to alleviate the stress of the week. As hard as that was (especially when my only friend on Nike is a marathon runner and I’m slowly catching up with her weekly totals) it was just what I needed. It turned out to be an very enjoyable run.  (And, well, I estimated that I did around 6 miles anyway).

And most importantly (although I didn’t feel it fully at the time) in the evening, I felt really good knowing that I got out there and did it!  Well done me.