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Wendy had to start taking some of her holidays so we both booked a week off work. Wendy promptly came down with covid. So that’s lovely. Obviously I followed suit.

She came over all ill on Tuesday, I had to get a test kit, but she tested positive as soon as it arrived on Friday, I tested positive the day after.

It’s dragging it’s feet. It’s Monday and I tested positive again today. Wendy’s barking a lot and has had painful ears and throat, and feels grotty. It’s making her low. I’ve only got a light dose. I feel a bit weak and tired and I’ve got a persistent tickle. The worst thing for me is trying to sleep. I’m having to prop myself upright because when I lie down I’m constantly swallowing and coughing. My funky new watch monitors everything I do, I’m not sure how accurate it is about monitoring sleep, but it said I had 21 minutes deep sleep last night, 5 hours 22 light sleep. I don’t know the ins and outs, but I am knackered for sure.

I’ve been looking at several race predictors and the science is that you lose 8% off your time when you double the distance. So I absolutely have to be 1.25 for a half to stand a chance. That’s 6.30 pace for the distance.

Right. I’m through with waiting for improvement. This week my plan is

I’m resting today. I’ll do the easy trots tomorrow. The 5x 1200m I’ll do as an 11 mile run with a flat out 5K race. I’ll do slow runs (8m/m) for the next two. I might skip the recovery run. Then I’m going to do a test half. I’m going to go out at 6.30 and just try and hold. It’s 15 seconds per mile more than I have done previously. If I’m rested, absolutely determined, and prepared to accept the pain, I might be able to do it.

It’s all getting very real now. I’ve got just under 7 weeks until my race. I did a quick blog last week moaning that I didn’t think I could do it. As I was writing it, the solution occurred to me: up the pace. It sounds obvious, but I was doing Camille’s plan after Garmin fooled me into thinking I was a lot faster than I actually am. That left me behind on my training. Then I panicked and went back to Advanced Marathoning plan but that says “do the long runs at marathon pace +10- 20%”. Which works, but I’ve no longer got the time to gradually build up my fitness. I remembered, as I was doing the blog, that when I started the plan it was after 2 months of no running. All the different run times (medium, fast, easy) were all the same to me because that was all I had. I set aspirational times and worked towards them, even though it nearly killed me. Within 8 weeks I had set an new half marathon PB. So what I’ve done is bump up all my run times. My long, fast run used to be 7.30 – 8.12, it’s now 6.50 – 7.15.

my new watch finally arrived. I was waiting and going insane, checking my email and the order status several times a day. They said I had to wait 3 -5 weeks for stock to come in. After 4 weeks I noticed they had a chat button on the site so I asked how long for my order. Apparently, even though I’d rung them to change my card details 3 weeks before, and rang back the next day to confirm it, they hadn’t updated my card and hadn’t told me. They told me to ring again. While I was on hold I checked the website, watches in stock, so I put the ‘phone down, cancelled my order and ordered it again with my new card. It arrived 2 days later.

In with calm. Deep breaths.

It’s now 8 weeks until my target marathon. I really don’t think I’m going to do it.

That Garmin blip that put me at 1.26 for the half marathon has really screwed me over. I was kind of relaxing and going with Camille’s plan, confident it was all working.

Now I’m back on Advanced Marathoning, on the 70 mile a week plan, desperately trying to make up lost ground.

Just a quick update on the plantar problem.

I’ve been doing the stretches, and I’ve started properly warming up before runs (which I should have been doing from day one) and I think it’s very manageable. My heels are sore and it’s less than ideal, but it’s nothing like the day that made me consult Doctor Google. That day I got up, no warm up, and blasted out 14 miles at 7.29 m/m (mara pace +10%). The rest of the day I could barely walk. Every time I sat down it took me minutes of shuffling to get my feet to stop hurting enough to be able to walk properly. I was scared that was how it was going to be after every run, which probably wouldn’t have been sustainable. It definitely wouldn’t have been sustainable if the pain got worse as the condition of my plantar deteriorated. Those were my thoughts and fears.

I did a long (18 miles), quite nippy, run the other day and my feet were sore, but not terrible. Then I tried to go fast. The plan said 5 miles running, (which I did at 7.37) then 5 miles at half marathon pace. My half pace is only my target mara pace (6.50) at the mo, so I pushed a bit harder. I wanted 6.30, averaged 6.40. Meh. The point is, I was going hard. My feet were OK the next day, once I’d got over the ‘getting out of bed and stretching’ bit.