This week hasn’t gone that well… for some reason I have been feeling more tired each morning than the night before and my days have been filled with 6 -hour return commutes and full working days in between; on the days when I have managed to work from home, I’ve still had to wake up at stupid o’clock as we have work going on in the house and there have been workmen coming and going…
…Which has all meant that I’ve not managed to run once this week yet, but I still feel very tired, sleep-deprived and I’ve started to put back the (few) holiday pounds I had managed to lose since I came back… I’ll still try to salvage something from the week though: hopefully get some more sleep tonight, do a long hard tempo tomorrow (yippee…), Sunday’s LR as scheduled and – if I feel up to it – some stride intervals on Saturday (the last such session before tapering begins). So no core or strength training this week, but I finished one strength programme last week and I can start the next one fresh in a few days’ time.
On a more positive note, I did my first outdoor serious (> 21k / 13m) LR last Sunday on the usual hilly route around the villages and it reminded me that doing the same distance on a treadmill (whatever the incline settings), does not compare with the real thing: it does not compare in terms of the value of the workout (psychological as much as physical) and it certainly does not compare in term of the enjoyment of the run: the cool breeze that comes as an unexpected relief when you need it most, running along tree-lined lanes then next to golden fields in the summer sunset… Or letting your mind wander in a way that it cannot do in the confines of a gym, stationary on a treadmill (where as fast as you may run, you never go anywhere…) Absolutely beautiful, Bradgate park next!
So… a frustrating week where I feel I’ve moved backwards rather than forwards… No serious damage done though and at this early stage of the preparation I hope it won’t make much of a difference on race day – as long as it stops here.
On the other hand… On the other hand, I was hoping I’d be in a very different position in the fourth week of my training: I had hoped that by now I’d have shed some of the excess weight, built some momentum in my training and even recovered most of my fitness. Instead, I feel like I’m starting from square one all over again.
But marathon training wouldn’t be any fun if it was all plain sailing, would it now?
Running the Marathon. Again. 