Every day my worn in, mud-encrusted Asics lie on my bedroom floor, ready to pound the pavements once again. And every day, I've stepped over them, trying not to look directly at them while I squeeze my size 3's into my black heeled boots or lovely sparkly brogues. Is it just me or do they actually look sad? To borrow a sentiment from Friends, they're not fulfilling their destiny.
Here's how it happened: I got back from Paris desperate to sign up to another run. But obviously my body needed a recovery period, so I decided I'd give myself a leisurely week. 'You deserve it' people said, 'enjoy the fact that you've got nothing to train for', 'don't worry, you'll get back to it really easily, just take some time off'. So I thought it was ok that I was getting up at 6:45am and getting ready for work instead of 5:45am for my morning run and spending my Sunday mornings in bed instead of running somewhere between 10 and 18km around Hyde Park. IT WAS NOT OK.
It's not that I've done nothing fitness-wise, I have been keeping up my weekly PT sessions, but it's not enough. I trained for months to bring my body up to a certain fitness level, to the point where I ran for 2 hours (and 3 minutes) without stopping. I don't want to jump back into a hardcore half marathon training programme, but feel like I'm wasting all of that hard work by just stopping completely. Plus, that was never the plan - I was supposed to sign up for another event and keep training.
So here it is. This is the week I get off my (slightly wibbly) arse and get back into training. The next 10km race I've entered isn't till July, but I want to bring my PB down to sub-50 minutes (my current 10km PB is 00:55:42), so I'm going to work on speed, as well as distance. Get me my trainers, let's do this!
