Week 11: Monday - back on the horse

Is it time to stop writing?

One of the best things about the training plan was writing about it. I like writing, I like keeping a diary. But now I’ve bailed on Runna and am only going out running 5km at at time, there’s really precious little to say – even less if I stop talking about how there’s nothing to talk about.

I did go for a run today

Anyway. This morning I ran 5km, again. It was bastard cold and still very windy – 7ºc, feels like -1ºc – and I had a long traffic stop to contend with. The new beanie is much too warm and has to come off after about 3km or so, but then my head gets cold. Need better headgear.

I’m enjoying running 5kms without intervals or progression or even warm ups, but faster than “easy run/conversational pace”. I guess I’m basically admitting that, 8 weeks in, it became true that every single workout type that Runna demanded became unpleasant in the absence of results. I’m sure if I had, say, managed 3.22km @ 4:40/km then I’d have been more than happy to continue. But the plan was making me worse both physically and mentally, so I did the right thing to ditch it.

Clearly I’ve moved on through being upset then angry and into acceptance. Who knew there were stages of grief about bloody training plans?

Mind you, I could do with some longer distances just to make sure I can still do them, because there really is a half marathon on the horizon, and also because there’s a stretch distance goal for the year I’ve got my eye on. Need 90-odd km in the next 3 weeks to do that.