A Guiding Life

I'm not sure what came over me but sometime mid November I signed up for a half marathon. It might say half in the title but it's a distance not to be sniffed at.

13.1 miles

And some of the problem is time on your feet. If you aren't fast you have to spend a lot longer doing it!

So mid December I started a 21k running program that was based entirely on time not on distance. By the end of February I was up to 13 miles and worrying that I'd 'peaked too early'.

It was a wet muddy winter

and I was getting a bit fed up with dragging myself out to do running I didn't want to do.

I cut right back on the training, dropped my miles and hoped that if I just maintained a general level of fitness (about 18 miles a week running, of which one was a 10ish miles) I'd manage to finish the run.

Taper week was whilst we were on holiday which helped with that but I drove HWMBO mad with what I was and wasn't prepared to eat during the week, and with not wanting to walk too many miles on sand or loose stones as my knee was feeling it.

Race day came too fast, I'd spent 4 months totally focused on this. It had affected my lunch hours and weekend plans. If I'd been more inclined to get up and out in the mornings maybe it would have been easier but I rarely got out the door running before 11am when I wasn't at work so it seemed to suck up most of a weekend run day.

I was really pleased though that I'd made sure my training runs were including really horrid hills, some were 25%. The course for the race was very undulating with a couple of real killer climbs.

I finished in 2 hours 11 minutes and 38 seconds. I'll take that as a success.

I was just so happy to have actually finished

(and without major toilet need disasters, as I had really struggled on some of the long training runs. It's a common problem with runners, but all the same, not much fun and it had been really worrying me.)