The ASICS 10k went as well as I had hoped to be honest. I’m not going to say it was easy after a very sedate three weeks and not much mileage in the legs but I managed to get round incident free. The build up, bag drop and wait for the run to actually start feels common place now, to a point that I can just drift through this whole process without the trepidation or nerves that I used to get right back when I started going to these races. A calm acceptance that I have to wait until that starting gun goes off as opposed to the old impatient me that wanted to get running as soon as the bag was tucked away safe. There were 18,000 running it and they were using a rolling start so by the time I’d walked from St James down Piccadilly the race was already 20 minutes old so I knew that when I reached the halfway point I’d be seeing those in the elite wave walking round with their medals.

Piccadilly provides a nice little hill start, nothing huge but enough to get the heart rate elevated nice and quick. It doesn’t let up either, it continues up Regents Street. So it isn’t until you are heading back down to Pall Mall that you get some respite. It was around here, 4k in, that I was relaxing into the race. I was also beginning to regret not wearing the club vest and changing into the club tee shirt at the last minute, it was hot and humid with the sun coming out from behind the clouds. All of the usual little mental demons were there, urging me to walk for a bit, wondering what I was doing, why I was doing this to myself. I was pushing myself a little, not too much, this wasn’t meant to be an all out race but a tempo run. I was happy with the feel and the pace seemed to be higher than I was expecting. I wasn’t expecting much considering where my fitness had plummeted to, but was pleasantly surprised by the time. A little under two minutes slower than last year, I’ll take that.

Tuesday was a very different story. It was planned as 8k with strides and I took my gear with me to work so I could get this wrapped in a commute run home. When 5pm rolled round I had no motivation at all, I just did not want to run. So I took myself off home and chilled for an hour, this has worked in the past, just letting the shit from the day just fall away and I can get out and clear my head. This time is wasn’t that simple, there was absolutely no energy, no desire to get out and run. I lay on my bed in my running gear for another thirty minutes not wanting to go and do it but also knowing I was going to go out and get it done. Somehow, I don’t know how, I found myself heading for Gunnersbury Park to get something out of the evening. My heart rate felt super high, my breathing difficult and restricted, sweating profusely and the legs so tired and sore. I ground out each kilometre, hating every step, wishing it was over already. It became too much, my mental strength was not match for this onslaught today, as soon as the Garmin told me I’d been running for 30 minutes I pulled up. I’d done something, it want a DNS, but it was a pale shadow of what had been planned.

Thursday arrived with its planned Easy 8k and I was a bit more ready this time. I didn’t even kid myself that I’d be running home from work this time, I was going to run some of the club route. So as 7pm approached I was jogging out of Acton for a lap round Ealing. It was tough, very tough. I still struggled with the HR, breathing and general feeling of malaise but it was nothing like Tuesday had been. I tried to manage the HR but just could not get hold of it, it remained uncomfortable for the whole time. By the time I got to Gunnersbury Park I was already done. Throughout the run my little demons had been pointing out short cuts, quicker ways to get home from where I was at almost every junction and I was having to defeat each one in turn knowing the next one wasn’t far away. The run was tough, not as hard as Tuesday had been but if I’d been new to running these two runs would have probably put me off for good thinking they were all like this.

The weekend rolled around and with it the promise of high winds. When I woke at 5am it wasn’t blowing too hard so I grabbed a coffee, small breakfast and got ready to get some 1k intervals done. This is one of my least favourite sessions but I was wanting to see if the runs were still shit. Thankfully not. I headed up the hill to North Acton Playing Field to run laps there and had some good old type two fun. Each rep felt hard but I got them done, with each lap building my confidence. I tried to keep the pace consistent throughout and at the same time leave it all out there. I wanted this to be a good session. At the time I wasn’t happy with the pace, I’d have liked a little bit more out of myself, but that will come. It was still above what I had run in January for this same session in the same park so cannot be too hard on myself there.

Then the “long run”.  I use quote marks here because it’s hard to see a planned 12k as “long” anymore. Still, it was more than I had done in one go for a while. I had so many different ideas for the route, out to Hyde Park and back? Give the Grumpiest 10k Route a go from home? Something along the river? In the end I settled for just getting out the door and hitting the familiar paths around Ealing combining some of the winter and summer club routes. I took it easy, kept it slow and stead and, for the most part, almost enjoyed it! I couldn’t get a grip on the heart rate though, it didn’t seem to matter what I did it didn’t feel like I was keeping this run at conversational pace. As I neared home it became apparent I’d got a small error in my calculations and unless I somehow extended the end or ran laps around the block I was going to fall short of 12k. That’s not my OCD though, so when I got to a point I could walk it off I stopped the watch and called it.

The whole week has felt physically hard, but mentally it’s been a lot harder. If this is how it had felt when I first started the couch to 5k, if I’d not run through other tough times and come out the other side, I’d have likely not continued with the running. I know this isn’t it, this is one of the lower spots that ultimately make the highs feel even higher.

Time’s up now though. The less structured training between the two ‘A’ races of this year is at an end. Next week is the start of the sixteen week countdown to the New York Marathon. Sixteen weeks of hills, drills, intervals, easy runs, long runs and gym time all so I can comfortably run for 26.2 miles and enjoy it. To have a third go at something only 0.17% of the world population* have finished.

* https://marathonhandbook.com/how-many-people-have-run-a-marathon/#google_vignette