… or why the Bristol Half didn’t go to plan!
It has been a busy week. Things started ok, with 4M on Monday and 10M on Tuesday, but Wednesday ended up being very hectic, as I was in court from 9.30 until 4.30 with no lunch break, and I’m not sure that a Snickers and a cup of tea really counts as a nutritious snack! I did shorter, easy runs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday but the paces weren’t quite what I would have expected (after a rest day my legs should have felt nice and springy, but they didn’t). This was probably because I was working a bit late most nights and skimping on sleep. I also had rehearsals on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon followed by a concert on Saturday evening. It went brilliantly, but the post-concert buzz didn’t help me sleep!
Any way, race day dawned this morning, sunny, warm and with a swirling, gusty wind. I was running so-so until about 9 miles and then began to feel very tired but (at the time more worryingly) also felt what I now suspect were psychosomatic twinges in my left hamstring (on the basis it feels absolutely fine now). End result was that I backed off the pace from 9 miles and jogged in at 7.30m/m to bring up 1.32.30… Pretty much my slowest half marathon in 5 years (making allowances for courses)!
Trying to put a positive light on things (at the end of the day, my training until recently hasn’t been great, with neither the miles nor the speedwork to make me run well) but it’s a bit frustrating to run quite this badly. Hopefully it’s just a case of the body being tired as it adjusts to the mileage and the lack of sleep catching up with me. Birmingham Half next month will let me know!
Sorry for such a gloomy post. I’ll aim for good news next week!
running home for christmas 
Leave a Reply