Happily Ever After

Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running

Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.

Not Quite Long Enough

by Russell Turner - 17:00 on 23 September 2018

That’s my final pre-Yorkshire Marathon long run done, the one that’s supposed to bring all the training to a climax and boost confidence for The Big Day, just three weeks away. If only.

Water stations on the course will be three miles apart so today’s masterplan was to run six lots of three miles separated by as much walking as necessary and in as little over 3:30 as possible. This worked splendidly for the first three runs, the last even including a modest half-mile hill and ending at 1:47, pretty much on target at halfway. Maybe that was the problem – the fourth three-miler, back on the flat, took a lot more effort and the fifth broke down after less than a mile. Not good.

I finished with a few walks, a few trots, and a final mile walked to reach the three-hour mark, at 14.64 miles – well short of my target even if I add on an unrecorded half-mile walk to my starting point. The icing on the cake was the return of my IT band niggle on the way home.

Matchgirl was sympathetic, pointing out that training for two marathons in one year is expecting a lot of a previously unsporting body. She didn’t mention my age but I’m sure that the thought was there. Two nights of broken sleep (I don’t know why) won’t have helped either.

Maybe my body is rebelling. Seated on the floor after my post-run stretches I observed (but didn’t feel) my calf muscles writhing and rippling as though an alien was about to break out. Most disconcerting. Matchgirl, who’d never experienced the phenomenon, could offer no explanation. I’ll ask Adam the Physio when I attend my cunningly scheduled sports massage on Tuesday.

The silver lining is that the training schedule for the next three weeks is increasingly light until The Big Day, giving me time to rest and recuperate. And there’s only one City Limits gig on the calendar in that time, a relatively local one, so no ridiculously late nights either. I’m still optimistic. Just.

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