When Training Goes Wrong

Today was meant to be my last long-long run before the North Down’s Way marathon in two weeks time, and I was slightly apprehensive about it. I’d taken a few days of running, training in general hasn’t been going phenomenally since being in London largely seeing as my recovery has been very lacklustre, and any time there’s 20 miles on the docket I think that’s cause to be a little scared.

My fears were somewhat well-founded, as it all went a bit wrong. I started bonking after only about 15k, certainly because I’d had half a tub of Ben and Jerry’s last night. After munching down a packet of sweets, things picked up a bit for the next few kilometres and I finally started to feel in a good rhythm, before running out of water around the 22km mark. No problem, I’ll go to the nearest Tesco and buy some more with my phone, except my phone has moved around in my pack in such a way that I’m now locked out of it for an hour. Fortunately I’m relatively near home, I can go back there, fill my water bottles, and head back out for the last ~9km; that’ll work quite well as it simulates the psychology of the double out-and-back a little. But I waited too long, my legs started seizing up, and when I set out again, every step felt awful, so I hobbled round another 4km to make it to 27 for the day before calling it quits.

Obviously I was hoping to have today’s run go differently, so I could feel confident going into the race, and the fact that it didn’t does make me a little bit more concerned about the amount of suffering race day might visit upon me. But equally, there is nothing much I can do now; I just need to eat and sleep well for the next two weeks and try and hope that when I’m at the starting line, I’ve put in enough good work over the past 6 months to carry me through.