Running...

Running. That wonderful and energetic activity that keeps a smile on your face, your energy levels high and motivation that continues to rise as your meet or beat your own personal goals. That is unless you're training for your first (and last) marathon. Then it's a ball ache of epic proportions. Seriously.... how do you lot do it? 

To say training's going swimmingly may be a slight fabrication or the truth on one hand but on the other, may just be an out and out lie. I have got to the root cause of my hatred for this training though. I'm an idiot! See, I want to complete a marathon and do it well. I want that feeling everyone talks about, the emotion, the sense of achievement and the like, I just don't want to have to spend 3 hours of my Saturday morning pounding the pavement trying nasty energy sweets and energy drinks. I'm aware one isn't going to happen without the other and there's not a chance in hell I'm giving up on this but it doesn't mean I have to enjoy it and therein lies the reason for the lack of blog activity. I'm a miserable git when it comes to my running at the mo.

Not running in general mind, In fact, I'm already planning on the aftermath when I'm going to concentrate on becoming faster at the shorter distances but at the moment, I'm bored of long runs! Really, really sodding bored! Half Marathons are nice, 10k's are lovely but anything over those 21.1km is nasty.

I've had a couple of weeks where I've completely missed my target times too though which for my latest jaunt of 29km I'm not too worried about but the week before 22km annoyed me somewhat. Especially as I came in under 2 mins quicker the previous week on a 27km go. Nothing seems to be consistent at the mo.

After Saturday's horrible 29km, the balls of my feet were actually bruised and painful so luckily having another pair of brand new identical shoes in the cupboard, I did just under 5km on Monday morning to see if it was any better and I think it was although we'll see come Saturday when a lovely 24km is called for before 33km on the following week.

Berlin is 4 weeks and 5 days away. Get through this and I can start enjoying my running again..