A month on...

Well, I've now done a month of my new training programme, and as some sessions are only done once every 4 weeks, I have now done them all. It's a great programme and I'm enjoying it. I have had to miss a couple of sessions.... one being on Wednesday when I missed my heavy weighted walking (after having a shin niggle last week I decided that maybe putting 20.5KG through it wouldn't have been the wisest decision) and today I missed my second long run of the weekend, and this is why...

I got up yesterday and there was a threat of very windy weather which was due to be worse today, so in my infinite wisdom (!) I decided to do the run that was planned for today yesterday with the view that if I chose to run through the dene on the windiest day, I would be somewhat protected a little by the trees. This was a last minute decision and so Graeme was hurrying me along as I was getting ready because he wanted to get his car to the garage before 9am and as he was giving me a lift to the "20 miles away from home" point, he didn't want to be late. So, I forgot the back door key and my sunglasses, almost lost my iPod walking to the car, and quite frankly felt hassled to death. He dropped me off at a place I wasn't familiar with so for the first 3 miles I was lost and I'd put windproof trousers on and was sweating so had to stop and remove them. When I finally realised where I was, I saw by my Garmin Graeme had only dropped me 17 miles away from home and the only resolution to the problem was to run in the opposite direction for 1.5 miles and then turn back to make up the extra 3. I wasn't in the best of moods and the wind was blooming ridiculous. I had packed my blister with moleskin and thought I'd done quite a good job, but in fact it was killing me from the start. I dreaded to think what it would look like by the time I got home.

I managed to talk myself around and stopped feeling in a moany mood and started to enjoy myself. Even running into the wind wasn't too bad and the sun was out. Every now and then a massive lorry would drive past me, and despite them attempting to be courteous and move to the middle of the road I would get a massive blast of strong wind nearly blowing me over as they overtook. It was at 10 miles where I suddenly became incredibly tired. My legs felt like they were weighed down with lead and my back felt like it was about to snap in two (obviously from the heavy deadlifts the day before). I still managed to keep up my 4.30 run and 3 walk but the wind became much stronger too. I ran through Seaton Carew and scrunched my face up as the wind hit me head on and by the time I got to about 15.5 miles I just couldn't breathe any more. The wind is the worst for my asthma so I took my inhaler, but I think I'd waited too long and I had sort of gone past that point of being helped. I rang Graeme to make sure he was going to be at home and he asked did I want him to come and pick me up. I wavered for a bit thinking I could just try and push on, but decided to get the lift. He was a few miles away so I tried to get as close to home as I could and had done 17 miles by the time he picked me up. I was literally exhausted for the whole day afterwards. We went for a meal to a lovely vegetarian restaurant I like and I was so tired I just wished I was back home. The blister on my toe was also horrendous... it was now a blister on a blister on a blister and so for that reason I decided not to run today before it gets in an even worse state. It almost healed last week but I ran on the Wednesday and made it worse. Hopefully an extra day will see it healed enough to run on again.

I almost caved in and had a glass of red wine last night too, after 7.5 weeks of abstinance. I decided against it (despite Graeme drinking which made it harder to say no), but when it got to about 10pm last night I was already glad I had stuck to my guns. I expected to really enjoy today as an extra rest day but I feel very fidgety and irritable and wish I could go out and run. I'll be honest, I'm starting to find Mondays a bit like that too now, which I suppose is a good sign I'm enjoying my training.
So, come hell or high water, next Saturday I'm running for 4 hours and Sunday will be running for 6. I want to get as close to 50 miles as I can. Next week will also see me moving up to 5 minutes run and 3 minutes walk, but the small increases seem to be coming along nicely.