Back to the grind! It certainly felt like it yesterday, when I ran a 25km race!


Since last September, when I ran my 80 Ultra in the Karoo, I have not gone further than 15km in one go. But I thought, how bad can it be? I have been training more frequently this past while, so surely I am a little fitter? I am a little fitter, because I realised I could once again chat while running, and not too long ago, this felt impossible. This was always my goal when I started running, to be able to run and have conversations without being out of breath. Sunday I was able to chat easier which was a nice sign for me, and until 18km down, I thought that I was doing fine!

Ha. My body just said, 'why are we doing this again?' and decided to grind to a walk. I felt like a Christmas toy whose batteries gave up just as I was beginning to enjoy the game! I ushered my friend on, and watched her cheerfully bob away into the distance. With a little bit of mental berating I realised I have felt this way before, and knew that I could get through this. So I started with the lamp post theory. 2 lamp posts run, one walk. All downhills I could maintain the impression that I was a 'runner' and keep moving. This must have helped, because before I knew it it was 3 km's to go and I could still see my friend's head in the distance. The weather was lovely apart from the time when ironically I had my 'traffic jam', when the sun came out a-scorching, just to add to the moment! When I began to tripple onwards the cloud cover returned.

Reaching the finish, I knew that there was quite a lot of grass, and on unfit legs, no dramatic sprinting would be coming from my weary legs. So I walked casually around the field waving at all the already finished fresh looking runners who were encouraging me onwards. When I had crossed the line just under 3 hours, my body decided to show me how it didn't like this route and I felt very dizzy and nauseous. I remembered my previous years of this race, that my body had the same response so I made my way over to my gazebo, but realised that I should move closer to the toilets instead. This was a very wise decision and afterwards I felt much better.

The afternoon, a strange stiffness lodged itself in my joints, and I was surprised, because i hadn't felt this in a while, no doubt another sign that my body was not used to distance. So I was 'forced' to resume position on the couch, which my body had no problem with!

However, looking at the one training program I did exactly half of the required distance for the week, so this means, that I had better 'divorce' myself from my comforting couch and get moving!
Sigh!