This week has been something of a 'rest and recover' week after doing the 10km event last Sunday; not that running 10km is, of itself, anything unusual - but running it that quickly is, at least for me!
Preventing injury has been a big focus this week. I was nursing a tender calf muscle after Sunday, which is why I've been swimming and doing classes at the gym (yoga, Body Balance) instead of running.
I've only done a few runs: a very slow half hour on Monday, which really only served as a warm-up to a much needed stretch session; an 'assessment workout' with miCoach on Wednesday; and an easy 50 minutes today. Well, it may have looked easy from the outside (if easy = slow) but it didn't feel easy! The first fifteen minutes, my body had that "I'm a clunky old car" feeling about it, and I don't think I did the Fartlek intervals justice - but the important thing is to have completed it, and returned home without injury.
Needless to say, my stats have been shot to pieces this week, with average pace times decreasing for the first time since I began this training six weeks ago and low km's run. A numbers girl, I don't like this. At least it'll make the next few weeks look good in comparison!
So the next two challenges, as I see them, will be: a) getting back into the rhythm of running training (it was surprisingly difficult to get motivated for the 50min run today!) and b) not psyching myself out of doing the half marathon in October. I felt pretty intimidated arriving at the starting line last Sunday, and 10km is a distance I run regularly! I think I'll need to be doing plenty of self-talk over the next few weeks to raise my confidence levels again. After all, I have no reason not to feel confident: I have set a realistic goal; I have a balanced, realistic training regime; and I have already completed a run amidst a large crowd of people.
And, the bottom line is what I know to be true: "my strength as a runner is that I just keep going." Hang onto that, Catie.
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