Special Brew

After working really hard over last few months I had a bit of a downer last week -  I sort of got a bit panicky about the Half Marathon then had a few bad runs which didn’t help. Writing a blog about it sort of compounded the anxiety, which wasn’t good (I started composing the blog about 10 times and had to scrap all of them) but hopefully things are back on track now!

It didn’t help that I had been out the nights before going for my runs (I was socialising, it would have been rude not to have a drink!) which made things much harder than they needed to be (and meant my legs gave up about 1 mile before I had hoped they would) and I felt physically sick once I made it home.

My long run yesterday went much better (had no alcohol the night before and even went to bed earlyish) I wore my St Dunstan’s running vest to check it was comfy and my new shiny trainers were broken in and ready to go. I was ready. I had even arranged for my long-suffering boyfriend to cycle down and find me in the park and supply me with a bottle of lucozade after I had been running for an hour, just to check that my body wouldn’t reject it and force me to go to the toilets and leave my body like something from the exorcist.

Upon arriving in the park I ran past a man in his 50s, in exercise gear (not fancy stuff, but it was football shorts and not jeans) he appeared to be drinking Special Brew. I couldn’t see it clearly and didn’t want to appear to be gawping, so I didn’t slow down to check – I must have made a mistake, it must have been a can of soft drink. I saw him again about 20 mins later and had a better look, it was definitely a can of Special Brew and I even saw him have a swig (which made me feel a bit grim, and makes me feel a bit grim writing about it actually) Can you imagine? swigging flat, warm Special Brew whilst exercising? uuuuuuuuuuurrrrg.  The next time I saw him he was with a shifty looking man who was getting something out of his bag. I spent the rest of my run wondering what this was – was it money, as it had been a bet (or to buy more beer); was it fags to go with the beer? was it a card for alcoholics anonymous?

That was the only excitement of the day, there were a few birthday party picnics, but nothing worth snooping on. Boring!

So I thought I had broken all my records and done a really good run. When I checked my Runkeeper when I got home, it turned out the thing had gone a bit mental and recorded about 1.5 extra miles which I hadn’t actually run. This was a bit gutting, but looking on the positive side, the run felt quite easy (as opposed to last week, where from mile 6 I thought I was going to collapse) and I felt ok enough afterwards to go out with some mates for a big Sunday lunch (and was able to communicate!) Going forward I will not trust Runkeeper quite as much and will maybe map the run better before heading out, so I have a rough idea in my head and will not rely upon technology!

I really need to start hassling people to sponsor me too, I have been far too nice to them so far less than 3 weeks to go now…