Hip Hip Hooray!

As you may have guessed, since the Cambridge half marathon a couple of weeks a ago I have been a bit disillusioned with running. It just wasn’t happening. Last week I did 2 boot camps, a session at the gym and ran about 5 miles in total. I just couldn’t do it. On Monday I spoke to a fellow runner and she said that it always took her 2 weeks to recover (despite running 8m and then 4 on consecutive days each week since!). This gave me hope. On Tuesday I duly got into my kit. I had no real goal in  my mind, simply to run and feel better whilst doing it!

I set off – it was nice and sunny and I kept telling myself that I should enjoy it. I also kept telling myself that it didn’t matter how fast (or slow) I went. I did keep looking at my Garmin however! Amazingly I wasn’t going too slowly – in fact I was doing ok! Further into my run, once I had calculated the route I wanted to do I kept on telling myself to:

Slow Down and be Aware in a Cone Zone (Photo credit: TranBC)

                               But I just couldn’t – I was on a role and seemed to be unable to listen to the ‘sensible’ voices in  my head.

 I wanted to finish – not run a really fast time. I did finish – I ran 8 miles in just over an hour. I was really pleased. Things were picking up and the beloved running that had been my friend was back!

Today was another warm and sunny day. As I dropped my son off at nursery after lunch I told myself that it was too warm and I was too tired for a run. ‘I will do it later!’ I then saw someone finishing her run and that was it. I was going! To begin with my legs felt like this:

Elephant legs (Photo credit: Gordilly)

  I kid you not! I then got into my rhythm and forgot about them (as you do). I peeked at my watch which told me that I was doing ok. My heart leapt a bit. ‘No calm down you can’t keep this up, you will have to slow down.’ The first mile was ran in 8.50! Not bad. Maybe I hadn’t lost the fitness from the race after all. ‘No don’t get excited still a fair way to go!’. Maybe, but I did manage 3 miles about that pace which I was pretty pleased with – especially considering yesterday and it was a lot warmer than I had been used to. It would appear that I was back in business!

Hip Hip Hurray (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And just to prove it I have entered some more half marathon races! (strike whilst the irons hot I say!)For more info see training goals.