Today I didn't feel like running

I wanted to do anything else. I had to myself a huge chunk of day, 9am-12pm where I could whatever I wanted.

This is not a post about how I did the honourable and inspiring thing, persevering even when it was hard, and just look at how determined I was, take a leaf of this smug book ya lazy ^&(&%.  It's just a ramble, really, trying to figure out why I didn't feel like getting outside. 

I even have now nice bright sparkly new running shoes, that I wished for ages but never felt justified to get them, until this project...they are so comfortable and awesome, (and expensive, but it's obvious why).

 I had 3 rest days after the last long slow run on Saturday,, where to be honest, I pushed a bit too much, and covered around 18-20Km. 3 days is a longish rest period, and  it was time to limber up and do the stuff set for this week: 3 short runs at various paces, and one long slow run at the weekend (when I say paces, I mean going faster or slower based on how suffocated I feel with the aim to feel spent after 45mins to 1 hour, because as of yet I still have no sense of pace unless I check the watch. Will that ever come?). 

 After procastinating for the better part of one hour even with the energy drink on board, I got out of the house. Meh. All along the way I just wanted to turn back home, read something, do some gardening (we still haven't planted the grass seeds, after we burnt the lawn), call someone, catch up with people I genuinely appear to ignore (but it's not true), catch up on odds and bits, just sit int he sunshine, even fold the mountain of laundry (I never have urges to do  this), do some gardening (we still haven't planted the grass seeds, after we burnt the lawn- mud baths highly likely this summer.. stressful!)

 

So I played a comedy podcast in which this guy (I really should do the honourable thing and reference him) ranted about being an Irishman in Scotland, and from there extrapolated to witty analyses of other countries and groups of people (in this lovely kingdom, as well as in Europe at large). Those were good, goofy 'says-the-pot-to-the-kettle' laughs with a tint of despondency and mild despair on their tail-end, as the main context was Brexit. 

And then he said something that pinged me out of my automatic passive mental stupour which was something like in life everything has a bit of value to it, that something can be so ridiculous, it's amost beautiful (I'm still laughing). And that is exactly why running was a good idea for this morning, for the headspace to mull over these stuffs. By the the time I got back home I decided his statement is an excellent get out of jail card for the way I see and do things.  I think I will write it down and bluetack it to the spots where I'm most likely to bang my head on the wall with various frustrations.

 

 Towards the end of the run  something different happened, as I was edging closer to home to populated area and seeing people, I found myself standing a bit taller and consciously going a bit faster. Eh, interesting, the plan was easy plod towards the end, but here I am in gazelle-mode on the home stretch, with a story in my mind that I am seen, so got to do it the right way. How weird, and how fitting with that little saying of that comedian- a lot of foolishness in life, some it's almost beautiful.

But, in effect,  today's plod was a 4to 5ish km, at an almost 8min/km pace, very slow and easy, but the heartrate was quite high, which means I am probably overtraining.

 

 The strange bit is that I also don't look forward to doing a tiny run tomorrow. It's not in the schedule, but usually I have this impatience for the next run, to get into that space again. I'm actually glad there is no exercise tomorrow. Gosh, I hope I have not been overtraining, which I probably did. Still need to get this body to safely and hopefully enjoyably run and finish that marathon. Definitely need to get my mind to do it too. Motivation, the holy grail of things, show thyself! 

P.S. The comedian I listened to was Andrew Maxwell. 

And a show off of the still sparkly incredible running shoes here. Gosh, they are beautiful!