THE GOOD BUCK

I’ve had a bit of a trauma this week.

I’m in my final cycle of training. 13 weeks today I’m going for my sub 3 attempt. Do or die. I’ve been in training for 8 months. It will have been 10 months of my life dedicated to this one goal. Everything is playing second fiddle to this. I’m getting up at stupid o’clock to do runs before 11+ hour shifts, finish work, shower, food, bed. I had to get up at 05.00 on my day off to get a run before the worst of the heat in our heatwave recently. As I said I’m in the final bit. The plan is tailored to my race, I’ve just got to follow it through to the end, which is the marathon.

Then on Friday, out of the blue, I got an email from my marathon saying they’ve decided to move it to April.

I did my long awaited test half marathon on Sunday. I larded up and rested for two days beforehand to give myself the best possible shot at it.

It was windier than I would have liked, and by an ironic bit of bad timing, Garmin (my gps sports watch) are having issues. The first time I’ve noticed any problem in 11 years of running and it’s on an important test run. Typical. The problem seems to be the live pace indicator. One second it’s telling you you are running too slow, then next too fast. Not ideal when you are trying to pace at your limit for 13 miles.

Anyway, I’ve checked everything in every way I can think of, and although the live pace is all over the place, the distance is exactly accurate, and even when glitching my watch can tell the time, so the overall time for my half should be right. My last half was 1.29:19 (and that was a huge PB) I ran this one in 1.26:44!

We’ve had a few things going on.

I was worried about Wendy, she’s been having small coughing bouts every day for over a year. Then I read on Twitter that one of the after effects of Long Covid is pulmonary fibrosis, a stiffening of the lungs that reduces function until death. That is less than ideal. I nagged Wendy into going to see the doctor, who referred her for a lung x-ray. The good news is they’ve said there is no apparent issue, case closed, so she’s not going to die. The bad news is the implied “suck it up” medical advice for her ongoing cough. Meh.

We took a mini break to north Wales. It was only 4 days, and it was only 50 minutes away, but it was a complete change of scene and felt like a proper break.

I’ve been following Camille’s plan and it’s starting to make sense. 6 days a week running, loads of tedious “8 miles, easy” nothing much challenging. But as I’m getting into the plan (6 weeks) I’m noticing the “8 miles easy at 8.30” are changing to “easy at 8.15” and shortly “easy at 8.00”. If I do every 8 mile at the suggested pace for that week, I can see how that would work. It’s still not very challenging, but this week my long run, instead of being a tedious “18 miles, super easy” is 18 miles; 11 at 7.45, then 7.00, 6.55, 6.50, 6.45, 6.45, finishing with an 8.00 for a cool down. 18 miles with 3 of the last 4 at sub 3 pace. That’s more like it!

Next week will be the test. It’s my 7th week of this plan, and ends with me having to commit to one plan or the other for the final cycle of training. Instead of my long run next week I’m going to do a flat-out half marathon. See if this plan has made me faster.

I was getting very bored with this plan. Get up, run 8 miles easy, go to work, repeat. I broke the plan and fell back into all the bad habits from before reading that article “why women are kicking arse at ultra events/ what men do wrong.”

I’ve been in two minds about a bunch of things to do with my running lately.

My main concern was with my knees. You always hear people saying running inevitably smashes your knees, and I was wondering if I was going that way. I overheard talk about two other drivers who had to have replacement knees and were in a right state. My mam has had it done and, after the pain of the operation and recovery, seems to be fine with it. But either way, you don’t want to be thinking you are hastening your knee destruction. Then there’s the stretching and cross training I’ve been doing on the rowing machine. Is that good or further stressing my knee? Should I rest until it’s completely better? I can see arguments for and against everything.

Today I went to see my physio. He had a look at my knees and stretched and pulled me in every direction to pinpoint the problem. He said it was just inflamed tendons. Huge relief. While I was there I asked all the questions.