I’m feeling like a Run Failure this week.
First of all there was my disgrace at Highbury Fields.
Then on New Year’s Day I decided not go to Double Parkrun, or even Single Parkrun. Because I hardly ever go out drinking/partying these days, and spend a lot of time saying “I can’t because I am running tomorrow”, I decided to have a proper day off, took off my trainers and put on my big stompy boots, put on so much make up I didn’t recognise myself, drank beer instead of water and Lucozade Sport and went out dancing until 5am. And I had a good time! But you know what? The next day, when I saw all the “double parkrun” posts on my Facebook running groups, I felt like I was missing out. More so, I think, than if I’d stayed in to run and had been looking at the “going out drinking” posts. And I spent the day hungover on the sofa, looking up potential double parkruns for next year.
Yesterday I went to the Viewtube session again, which was the only non-failure of the week. Because of bloody Christmas, the track was closed, so the session consisted of a slow run through the Olympic Park (I wasn’t the slowest this week!!) and a speed session in a tunnel and an unused slip road described by one of the members as a “wee hill”. I particularly enjoyed the hill bits, in fact I would enjoy a bigger, steeper hill too, but be careful what you wish for! Unfortunately, it started to absolutely bucket with rain on the way back, and the wind was up and it got quite unpleasant! I had another of those “you’re only really marathon training if you have to suffer running in conditions like this” moment.
Today was my biggest failure of all because I blew out my long run. The main reason for this was that my left ankle, which has been bothersome for the last thirteen years since I tripped over my own skirt coming down the stairs of a number 97 bus and turned it the wrong way, felt really stiff and sore. Had it been a nice day, I would have opted for a long walk instead, or perhaps just seeing how far I could get with a bus pass in my back pocket. But today – the tail end of “Storm Eleanor” – it is blowing with an strong icy wind and is seriously unpleasant. I have still not quite recovered from The Cough and didn’t want a sore ankle to turn into a sore ankle and pneumonia. (One of my best friends got pneumonia when she was training for the London Marathon so this is a real worry). I decided to walk over to the running track, but by the time I got there I couldn’t even get the enthusiasm up to run once round the track, let alone forty-five times around it, and turned round and went home. As a consolation prize, I have booked a body conditioning class for later this evening, but I feel pretty rubbish right now. I’m quite frustrated by the way work and Christmas get in the way of my running schedule – I have to do extra hours all the time (because I live on my own in London and I don’t earn enough to cover basic living expenses, let alone races etc unless I do a lot of overtime) and I end up working most weekends so I often end up doing my “long run” on Wednesdays, which means if I do the speed session on Tuesdays I run the risk of not being recovered enough for a long run on Wednesdays.
Going to spend the rest of the afternoon taking a serious look at my Google calendar and trying to schedule my long runs better.
I wish the weather would improve.
7:07 