There she goes again...

Well, as I mentioned last week, I've now not been training for a week and a half. And I missed doing the Grunty Fen half marathon. The week before that, I was feeling so confident. I'd run 8.8 miles, and I was ready to try out the Grunty Fen, which would have set me up - I'd have known. I could do it. Then that didn't happen, and then I got sick and now I have, as of today, exactly two weeks until I run my first ever half marathon. So all of a sudden, I went from feeling pretty cocky to feeling exceptionally low on confidence. Especially with this whole "time" business, which I admit I brought upon myself. I started the sweepstake, and it's got people talking about their personal best. The people who have been most supportive have been saying things like "but you should feel any time is an accomplishment - you've never run it before", but now I want to beat the other people (NOT all of them - my goodness, we have some fast runners in my organisation). Summer says that I shouldn't think like that - if I keep my goal time reasonable, then I can feel pleased if I beat it, but if I set it too high, I'll feel disappointed when I finish the race, even if I do a perfectly good time. There is something in this. It is more sensible than the people who have said "But if you don't do a good time this time, it'll give you something to beat next time." These people are missing something massive about the whole hating to run thing. Mind you, they are also correct. If I don't get a time I think is good enough, the chances are, I'll do it again. I hate myself.

Anyway, this is the story so far. I had this chesty cough all last week, and Sal said I shouldn't train until it had gone. She doesn't realise that I often carry a cough for several months, but I let that go. She seemed to think I'd be better by the weekend, and I undertook to get early nights (and some of them did occur before 11pm). I resisted running Dave, who wanted me to go out on Thursday - I was still feeling that Sal was right at that point, although it was killing me that I was wasting precious training time. Sal said I could start again probably on Sunday. I did go to pilates on Wednesday, but I didn't do anything too hard (and stopped if it made me cough).

On Friday, Summer texted to say her weekend was pretty chaotic, and she had time to run on Saturday afternoon, if I wanted to join her, she wanted to run 11 miles. I wanted to. But I was too scared of Sal to just go ahead, so I emailed the Teach to see what she recommended. I think she could sense my frustration, and thought that it outweighed the recommended approach. She said "Go for it. It's probably a bridge too far, but see how you get on".

Now here's a funny thing. We set out from Summer's so I had to cycle over first. I thought the cycle ride would be OK because I cycle very slowly. But I seriously thought that ride was going to kill me, and by the time I got to Summer's I felt terrible, and would have laid money on my dying if I attempted running (which I generally consider being more difficult than cycling). Summer shared my concern "Are you alright?" she said, as I coughed. But the part of my brain that wanted to get that 11 miles done was in charge. "I'll be fine", I said.

And I was. We had a false start, because I brought a bumbag with me to put the gel sacs into, and it bumped around so much we went back to dump it. Luckily although the particular leggings I was wearing didn't have pockets, the top was a cycle top, so it had one of those pouches in the back, so I shoved the gel sacks in there. We ran around the lakes at Ferry Meadows, and it was really lovely. I wished that I lived closer to the lakes, which certainly were more enjoyable than running around New England. It was fun doing a bit of people watching - such a cute little boy who had just had a tumble off his bicycle, and was howling to his mum. The words were indistinct, and Summer mentioned this to me, so I translated for her. "He said 'It hurts too much to wiggle it'". This appeared to have been serious, because when we lapped the lakes a second time, we saw a bloke (dad, perhaps) taking away the two bicycles, although mum and kid had gone by then.

Well, we did 10.76 miles, not too fast, at 11 minute miles on average, and although my thighs started hurting about half way round, I didn't feel bad or tired at all. This was exactly what I wanted to happen. Although I have to say that my legs are still feeling it this morning. And it's really happening... the signs are up in town. I always knew I'd stop the traffic one day...