Don’t Panic Mr Mainwaring

I have been feeling poorly these last few days.  Might have been man flu. Might have been jet lag, but running was either rubbish or didnt happen at all.

I had a reasonably good November/December where I ran every day for 32 days and started to build mileage sensibly, and even though a Christmas day flight with Champagne and Caviar scuppered this year’s Marcothon effort, I still managed to run a pretty solid time for the Boxing Day 10 miler in Hamilton, Ontario.

After that I swapped running for holidaying and only managed one run in the following week.

2015 arrived with a big fat zero in the training log and a big fat jump on the scales. I tried a run one day and managed all of 2 horrible miles on aching legs, and with that abject failure my running career was over. At least according to Private Fraser bouncing around in my head yelling “We’re Doomed! Doomed I tell ye!”

Fast forward a couple of days and feeling a wee bit brighter I jumped on the treadmill after work for the scheduled Yasso 800 session fully expecting another fail. The first few minutes of the very slow warm up were yucky and I nearly chucked it. Legs weren’t working properly at all, but slowly minute after minute they warmed up until there was no more room for excuses, time to hit the first interval. It was so hard! By the time I reached the end of the interval I thought my legs were going to fall off. The second interval  was nearly as bad. Somehow, as if by magic, the third interval wasn’t too bad at all and the fourth was actually relatively easy. And so it continued.

Maybe I will still be able to run this year after all.

Lesson learned?

1. You don’t lose fitness overnight so don’t panic about missing a few days

2. Don’t stop just because it doesn’t feel good. Ease into it slowly and if you keep going fitness will prevail.

3. Intervals 3 and 4 are always easier than 1 and 2. Remember this fact.

4. If you know all of the above don’t be a drama queen just because things aren’t quite going to plan