There’s two ways this blog can go.
I could look back at tonight’s run and bemoan the fact I didn’t enjoy it at all. I could write about how I was beaten from before I even started because I was looking up 5k to 10k training plans and saw one which started with ten minute runs followed by sixty seconds of walking, and I allowed that idea to get into my head when I knew it wasn’t what I wanted.
I could write about how having completed C25K last night I now had no time target to aim for which would have kept me going.
I could focus on the humidity which meant I was sweating like a [insert your own joke here], or about how that same humidity mixed with the light drizzle meant my t-shirt stuck to my nipples!
Maybe I could turn my attention to writing about losing the mental battle in the middle two miles, and that even though it felt right at the time breaking into little run/walk intervals was absolutely the wrong thing to do. It might have been what I thought I wanted but it was definitely not what I needed.
Or even stopping my watch completely with a mile to go. Letting thoughts of just giving up and walking home invade my mind. Allowing the negativity and feelings uselessness of flood in.
Alternatively, I could pen a line or two about how at that very moment I stood on the bridge and summoned up the strength to give myself a bloody good talking to, that if I gave up now then the previous three miles – despite being a struggle – would have been utterly pointless.
I could jot down as a matter of record that if I managed to make it that last mile home without stopping I would have at least salvaged something from a crap run, regardless of how long it took me.
What about a few words cutting myself a bit of slack for once for dragging it back from giving up to carrying on? I’ve missed one run this week, and cut another one short, but I didn’t let neither of those things happen tonight. I nearly did, but I turned it around. I limited the damage, surely I should allow myself a bit of credit for that?
Even going back to the beginning, I could give a nod to the decent start to the run and how I tackled the steady climb at the beginning without too much difficulty, probably the easiest it has felt yet.
So even though I was a few minutes slower than last week I’m choosing to end on the positives. Onwards and upwards.
Playlist: Red Hill Mining Town (Aine), One Tree Hill (The Coronas), Mothers of the Disappeared (LYRA), One Day Like This (Elbow), Running To Stand Still (Kodaline), Where The Streets Have No Name (Gavin James), Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (The Police), Tears Of Clew Bay (Imelda May), All Works Out (The Riptide Movement), Life in Technicolor (Coldplay), Exit (Fangclub), Dancing In The Dark (Bruce Springsteen), Thing of Beauty (Hothouse Flowers), Imagine (Emile Sande), Reward (The Teardrop Explodes), Oliver’s Army (Elvis Costello & The Attractions), Shining Light (Ash), Common People (Pulp)
HUFF, PUFF AND SHUFFLE 