Half Training – Week Ten

‘You guys carry on. Please don’t wait for us.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Dave (Green I think or it could have been Dave Craddock).
‘Absolutely,’ I said, and John was nodding vigorously in agreement. 

The thing about running in a group is that either you’re all going to be of a similar ish ability, or there will be a lot of hanging around waiting for the back markers to catch up. It can work sometimes – I have been pulled along, seemingly connected by an invisible rope, keeping, just, the person in front within eyeline. My speed has increased, and it can be a genuinely good threshold run for me, even if it is at a conversational pace for most of the others. 

However.

Sometimes, I want a conversationally paced run myself, and that means cutting the rope and being set adrift, either on my own or, as in this case, with someone of a similar ability. John is over ten years older than me, but we seem to be well matched running wise. Sometimes he beats me and sometimes I beat him. But when we are just out for a natter and a canter, we manage it quite well, at our pace. 

John had a good reason for taking it easy today, because he’d covered twelve miles yesterday in a parkrun sandwich, with a decently paced filling. I, on the other hand, should have been getting a long run done. But I’ve been struggling with them of late – or is that of always? – and so I ditched the slog on the tarmac and took to the trails, with its grass, tree roots, rocky bits, and beautifully carpeted pine and moss ground. It means that you go even slower sometimes, especially as I had the navigational map on my watch and got us mildly lost on a few occasions. 

We both decided to cut our losses at the café in Thurstaston and pause for an ice cream before jogging the final mile up to the car. It was a little over six miles in total, which does not a long run make if you’re supposed to be training for a half marathon. It was, though, a beautiful run and one of the biggest reasons that I run in the first place. 

So, it was worth it. Worth it for the now, but will it be worth it for the Half coming up in six weeks’ time? Am I losing the drive to keep going with my goal? It’s quite hard to keep motivated when you don’t see incremental gains. That’s not quite true but the gains are exceedingly small for some of my efforts. I know that partly it’s down to my body changing, as I’m into my fifties now. I can’t see the rapid improvement that I saw ten years ago. So perhaps I should pack it all in.

Except that I love doing crazy little runs through the woods and over the fields and on the beach, that require me having to sometimes climb over fallen trees or flail my arms like Phoebe (Friends reference) or get stung by nettles and scraped by brambles. If I want to do those kinds of runs and enjoy them, I need to keep myself fit, and for me that means having a bit of a goal, because I know my lazy arse tendencies. 

In that case, this was the output of week 10, which was a little bit more than week 9, so there is that. And it’s time to get back in the saddle. 

Week Ten 

Mon	London – I know there are roads in the big smoke, but I only used them to walk the dog.
Tue	London
Wed	Coming back from London + weights (made the mistake of not reducing the weight)
Thu	Club Pub Run from the Wheatsheaf in Raby – a lovely, trail 10k with a nice ale at the end with the gang.
Fri	Life
Sat	Birkenhead Parkrun with zero warm up and zero warm down aside from a cup of tea and a sausage buttie.
Sun	Short Sunday run – six miles and a bit.
	15.8 miles total