No retreat, no surrender

A favourite film of mine as a kid this... very corny but great all the same!
At the beginning of this week I was thinking about how I fared at Florence marathon, and despite hating it and wanting (from the second it started) to give up, I couldn't give up because of not wanting another DNF, so I had to carry on. In fairness I think this race was my toughest yet, and I think that's because no matter how hard it got, there was a definite "No retreat, no surrender" attitude about it.

I was talking to my receptionist about India, and I said that it didn't matter how hard it was going to be, I would crawl it if I had to. She said she believed me! I explained to her that I think you have to go into these things knowing you are going to suffer... there's pretty much no two ways about it... suffering is something that is a given, and it doesn't matter how hard I train, there will be at least one point during the race that I will be suffering, and it's better to accept it now.

Today I was attempting my first "looped" run. The plan was to go 3 miles out and run back, run past my house and go back out again... 3 loops in all.
My blister was not good and I packed a cushioned plaster over it before putting a gel toecap on. The first 3 miles it was really really itchy and I even considered that running today may not be a good idea as it never gets a chance to heal. Shrugging these thoughts aside I carried on. Today I attempted a 15:5 run/walk which was really great. I do like a full 5 minute walk break, and instead of breaking the run down mile by mile, I only thought about the next 5 or 15 minutes.

The first loop went well, and then I was running past my house ready to do the second. My legs seemed quite heavy but I just thought it was my brain being too clever and trying to get me to stop. The second loop went by fairly uneventfully and as I looped around my house again one of the old cronies from the bungalows said to his friend, "Oooh, I think she's off for her third loop now". Hey, nowt gets past the folk around here!

I was feeling more tired now after doing 12 miles. I seem to find between 9 and 12 miles difficult (no matter what distance I'm running), so just thought about how I am normally much more achy on a Monday for my 6 mile run after doing deadlifts and this was "easy" by comparison. I was on a walk break at the turnaround point (15 miles by now) and began the running section when I got the worst ever cramp in my calves. It was really awful. I tried to ignore it, but it was impossible to run through. I stopped at the side of the road and attempted to stretch but it was too late for that! I was trying for 18 miles in 3:15 and was doing very well (I was actually beating this target) however it soon became apparent that I was going to have to put this plan aside and just get the distance covered by any means possible. I would run about 100 metres and be in complete agony as my calves contracted to the point of sheer pain and I was back walking again.

To cut a long 3 miles short, I had to walk the majority of this distance and although trying to do a sort of 'Power walk', it was still slower than I hoped. My mind and the rest of my body were willing, but my calves weren't... and then my hamstrings didn't want to play either. My own fault I think though, as I only took 2 gels. I believe the last time I ran this far I had 4 gels in the same time frame! You live and learn eh?

So, when I finally got back in 3:18 I was pleasantly surprised that it was only 3 minutes more than my plan. I went into the bathroom and ran a bath. Even stretching was impossible as the pain was too much so I lay in the heat of the bath which helped tremendously. Even taking my top off was a nightmare as I got cramp in the muscle under my arm (in my back)... so it definitely looks like an electrolyte problem today!

I then went over to my mams and nicked my dads scalpel and sharp scissors. After soaking them in boiling water I proceeded to deal with my blister. I cut all of the dead skin on top away (and there was quite a lot of it), put sudocreme on and bandaged it up. I may have to resort to not running this week if this doesn't help!