On the comeback trail

After yesterday's fairly downbeat entry, I'm pleased to report I'm closer to my usual self today. I didn't get a brilliant sleep last night, with the little man making himself known at 4am, but I managed to chalk off a few solid hours before hand and that made a world of difference. I won't say that I was completely chipper throughout the day, but nonetheless a very different personality to the moody beast that filled my shoes on Monday.

The cameo run last night helped restore some resemblance of sanity. It was a defiant slap in the face to the doom clouds I'd allowed myself to be swallowed up by in recent days. The turnaround will have come too late to see any benefit on the scales tomorrow (expecting another gain) but whereas I've been eating without a care for the consequences, the last 36 hours has seen restraint.

I've not run tonight. I could have done in some desperate attempt to get back to even on last week's weigh-in but to be honest that seemed futile and a waste of a training run. Instead I plan to go for what will be my longest circuit to date tomorrow evening, subject to the weather.

Fundraising has been going well, with the total inching towards £300. I struck on the idea to sell Cadbury's Creme Eggs after seeing they were on offer at Tesco (12 for £2, bargain). I bought two boxes for the office and invited my colleagues to have them at 50p a pop with all proceeds going to the run. The idea caught on and I subsequently sent three boxes to my friends at RateMyPlacement - whether I go home with the award at their bash next month or not, they are an incredibly good bunch, and I'm grateful for their support.

I don't fear the scales tomorrow. What will be will be. When they show me as heavier than last week, it will be fully merited. However, I now feel in a better place, ready to embrace the tried and tested diet rituals, train hard for the half marathon and get on with every day business that has seemed such a struggle of late.

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I am Karl Pilkington

Tonight I learned a valuable lesson to take forwards with my half marathon training. Essentially I know nothing about running and I am an idiot.

Yes I am

Why do I think this? Well, to date I've been making things up as I go along. A bit of running here, a bit of running there. I've not followed any particular plan or schedule, and have just been getting by on my own instincts. When I wasn't feeling 100 per cent a couple of weeks back, I listened to my body and held off on the training front. So far so good.

On Sunday I ran 10 kilometres. I've never run further, and so by default that was my long run for the week. If you look through simple training plans, such as this one following a long run should come a rest day and then an easy/recovery run. Yesterday I rested. Today I should have been a recovery run. Only I knew better and had greater ambitions. I wanted to raise the bar a bit higher and get up to the 8 mile mark tonight.

I felt pretty fresh and had no ill effects from Sunday's exertions. But it soon became apparent that my body wasn't up to anything challenging this evening. Unfortunately having set out for a long run, this epiphany occurred only after I had run 4 and a half kilometres away from the house. Clearly a ploddy run around the block would have served me better tonight, rather than find myself a long way from home. The journey back was a patchy mix of walking and running. My apps tells me in total I ran just over 7.5km which is still a good workout, but well below what I was aiming for.

So today I've learned that I don't know best. I'm going to formalise my training schedule and listen to the advice of people who know a lot more about this running lark than I do. I've still got 7 and a half weeks to get this right, and I will.

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Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

My blogs on a Sunday night tend to be quite negative affairs. I've usually eaten too much and am feeling a little sorry for myself when I come to write them, and could quite easily have penned an article that maintained form had I got around to writing this earlier. However, unlike previous Sundays, today had a happier ending to report.

Yes I've consumed a hell of a lot more than I would during the week. There has been cheese. There have been bags of crisps. Toast came back into my life and then there was the smaller matter of the roast dinner I cooked for the family this afternoon. I should have felt bloated. I should have beached of the couch tonight. Instead I checked on the weather, felt that my evening meal was far enough down the digestive tract for exercising without nausea, and then pulled on the running gear.

The net result? Well, whereas yesterday I really struggled with the 5k, tonight I ran 10k in 52 and a half minutes. http://www.mapmyrun.com/workout/471158571

This will either set me up well for a couple of well disciplined days ahead of the weigh in on Wednesday, or make me feel like hell. The jury is out on which way it will go but I'm expecting to be a little sore in the morning.

Despite my relative struggle on Saturday morning, it has been good to get running again after the self-imposed break for illness. Since Thursday I've clocked up just under 21km, effectively a half marathon. Sometime between now and 22 March, I've got to pull the three workouts into one and not spread it across different days.

A good way to end the week. Hopefully the next one will be more productive still.

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Going The Distance

Tonight I've had a bit of a psychological breakthrough in regards to my half marathon training. I'm not afraid to admit that up until this point I've been feeling a little nervous about how far I'll have to go. I've become comfortable doing 5km but the thought of doing that four times back to back with a sprint finish on top has filled me with dread.

Last September I competed in a 10k run, coming home in a respectable 56.38 but a fair chunk of that race was covered at walking pace, most notably that blimming great hill in the middle of the golf course. I wasn't fit enough to run the entire race and in the four months since I've not gone beyond my comfort of a Saturday morning 5k. With the half marathon just over two months away, I had to get out there and get some distance into my legs.

The problem is as a working dad, time is a precious commodity. It is unrealistic for me to run first thing in the morning as I need to get my youngest up and ready for nursery before getting his big brother ready for school. My lunch breaks are now restricted by the fact that I'm making up time that I lose first thing, due to not being able to leave the school gates until 8.40 at the earliest. After work I get home, get the boys fed, bathed and ready for bed. After that, I cook for my wife, who has a much more stressful day than I do, and then my choice is to eat at the same time or pull on the running gear.

So many reasons exist not to go out in the evenings. Fatigue. Hunger. The weather hasn't been entirely helpful for my motivation of late, though I have made it out a couple of times for half hearted efforts. Last night I hoped to run but the rain arrived and drowned my good intentions. Tonight, with clear skies above me I left my excuses at home.

To mix things up, I made a change from my usual route. Going past all those take away outlets was getting a little old, plus a new direction meant I would be unaware of how far I had run. My mind tends to play tricks on me when I see distance markers, even at the parkrun, meaning I suddenly feel weary or notice an ache or pain that wasn't there before. Running blind tonight meant that didn't happen. And when I got back to my driveway I stopped my app to be informed I had managed this.

Boo-ya!

Just under 10k in 52:30. Had I known I was at that sort of distance I'm sure I would have found an extra 100 metres on my way home just to take it up to a nice round figure! Still, I'm feeling pretty darn satisfied this evening. If I can do this on a cold Tuesday night after the little one kindly provided me with a broken night's sleep, then maybe this half marathon business isn't quite as scary as I had been thinking.

13 miles. 21 kilometres. This guy is starting to believe he is going the distance.

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