Reassessments

Sometimes you have to sit back and reassess the situation when things aren't quite going to plan. I've had to do that, yet again! My chest infection turned out to be an upper respiratory tract infection which meant antibiotics were as useful as a bag of Skittles (have you seen the ingredients of Skittles???). The doc said it was a 6-8 week cough and all I could do was steam my face with a few drops of eucalyptus oil and continue with the sauna. I then either strained or pulled a muscle in my chest by coughing so much, and that fully put paid to any training whatsoever!

I'm now just over a week on and I've put a few changes in place. With William and Shaun's approval, from this week I have decided to do my long run/walk on a Saturday, get home, have something to eat and drink and then a couple of hours later go out for a long slow walk. This will add the desperately needed time on feet and get me used to having a break and then going back out again when I'm tired. I have undone the downloading from Fetch to Facebook because I'm sick of explaining that 23 minutes rest is actually a sauna (and the innuendos when I categorised sauna as "other" we're even worse). I have started as from Saturday just gone, to call all time on feet "Run/walk" despite some of it being a walk only. This will help me to see how many hours I've had on my feet and how many miles I've done. The time and mileage far outweigh speed at the moment so it seemed the sensible thing to do.

My support runner, Kerry, is absolutely flying and has got herself up to nearly 18 miles already, so she's leaving me in the shade so to speak. :-) But... You know me, the queen of coming back from injury (let's face it, I've had practice!!!) so I'm confident I'll be fine. It's gonna hurt like Hell, but that's inevitable!

So, I managed 2.3 miles walk on Saturday without coughing too much but my chest strain gave me a lot of pain in the wind so I had to come back earlier than I'd hoped to. I walked 3 miles on the treadmill on Monday in record time for me (39.10) and finished with very sore heels as I'm not used to walking so fast. (I have to say though, I couldn't walk that fast outside, which is a damn shame!). Yesterday I did 4 miles in 45 minutes on a 3:3 run/walk and today it's lots of heavy (for me) deep squats, which I have found immensely helpful since starting to do them.

On Thursday I'm attempting my first set of hill reps. I live half a mile from a fairly steep half mile hill so I'm choosing that one to begin with. I'm meant to pick a hill I can run up for 10 minutes (and we do have them around my way) but I don't want to jump into unknown territory at such a level just yet! I'm also supposed to run up it at half marathon speed, but I'll leave that for another week too.

All in all I'm feeling very positive about the whole thing. Not sure why... I'm so underprepared for something that is only 8 weeks away. However... When did that ever bother me!!!