Tis a Beautiful Day for a Run. Half Marathon Training: 8 Days to Go

So today was the last long run. Considering I’ve only done about 4 longuns, and had some failures along the way (stooped ass summer weather), I wasn’t looking forward to this one. I had planned to get up at around 8am and go on the run early to beat the heat and get it over with. So 10:40 came and up I got! Ah well, what’s a holiday without a lie in?

I was making a significant effort to change my thinking about the run, to get myself into a positive frame of mind.

“This is going to be awesome!”

“We can do this”

“I will be ok”

“You’ve only got 8 fucking days left so just do the damn thing”

I also had a protein bar in preparation for the longun. It was an interesting experience. It said “flapjack” on the packaging, but I aint ever tasted a flapjack like it. mmmmmmmmm squishy squishy protein.

And off me and the husband went. I even did a little pre-run pose:

After my blog yesterday, I decided to follow the advice of this lovely lady. I wasn’t going to aim for distance, I was going to aim for time. Rather than push myself to 16k, I was just going to aim to run for 2hrs. The way I see it, is, if I can run/jog/power walk for 2hrs, I should be ok to get through the half right?

Weather wasn’t too bad. Warm but overcast and it looked like it might rain. RAIN! FUCK YES! BRING IT ON!

So, the path we were to follow was some of our 5k route and then the Blessington Lakes 10K route. The one with the killer hill. During the run, I got my photo taken as my husband acted as some lame ass paparazzi dude!

I also noticed, that despite my post holiday weight gain, my legs don’t jiggle so much when I run (yes I was looking…don’t judge me)

Then we came to the lakes route, I’d turned off the pace and time notifications on the running app because they bug the hell out of me.

“What do you mean I’ve only been going for 7 minutes 11 seconds? Fuck you, you’re lying you are. Lying. I can’t keep going for 17 million hours when I’ve only just come this far” (and so on).

Here is the lake. And yes, it is now known as ‘The Loop’. I’ll explain later. And yes, I was going to run around the whole damn thing. I’d set my alarm to go off an hour into the run and I was going to have a powerade gel. Who knew I, Me, Leanne, would be running for so long I was going to need a glucose gel? It was Strawberry and Banana flavour and it wasn’t so bad until the husband piped up that he would imagine the texture would be comparable to something else, he’d never tried before, and probably wouldn’t. (Unless it was Hugh Jackman…I think he would then). But anyway, “thanks husband, that was a really valid comparison, well done you”.

It also didn’t help that he thought he’d be funny and started screaming and running really quickly whilst looking behind him (ya know, as in “I’ve just had a glucose gel, so I’m like Popeye, and can run really quick because of the energy it’s given me”). I didn’t get the joke and truly believed Jabba the Hutt had started chasing me, and to be fair I was going slow enough for him to catch me. So I started screaming and sprinting. Then I just hurtled abuse at him (husband, not Jabba the Hutt – who I think I successfully burnt off) for being a prick.

Now, this hill. That hill. The bane of my life. The one I’ve never been able to beat. Today was the day. I was going to beat it. You wanna know how I beat it? Yeah, you guessed it. I did the route in reverse and ran down the motherfucking thing rather than up it. YEAH, SCREW YOU HILL. SCREW YOU.

And, I savoured running down the damn thing. It didn’t matter that there were other hills I had to get up in order to be able to run down it. It wasn’t THAT hill!

During the run, it rain, downwards (when it rains sideways, it really is no fun), a guy also passed us, meh, he’s a quicker runner than me. So what? He passed us just after a particular difficult incline (which I ran up!) and the strange thing happened of me holding some sort of a conversation during a run. I used to HATE talking during my runs, I preferred to concentrate my efforts on not dying!

The Fast Running Man : “How are ya?”

Me: “Hey, good, you?”

The Fast Running Man: “Not bad, that was some hill eh?”

Me: “Yeah, I think it’s killed me, (cue my CBT thinking, and taking the advice I give to patients…If it’s a negative thought or sentence, always say “but”, always give it a “but”) still, what comes up, must come down”

The Fast Running Man: “Exactly, you doing the loop to?”

Me: “Yup”

The Fast Running Man: “Well good luck, see you later”

Wait a minute. Shit. Am I still running? Yeah. Oh. Shouldn’t I be dead right now?

Between the conversations, the glorious glorious rain, and the little breeze. I got a stich. I think about 1.5hrs in. And it hurt like a mofo. At this point I stole Fiona’s mantra and just kept repeating: “This pain will go away, this pain will go away” and it did. I never knew stiches didn’t kill you before now! Everyday is a school day eh? Then the husband (I was his friend again by this time) told me it was 14:20, I took out the app, 5 minutes to go. Then the 5 minutes had passed and I’d ran 2hrs without stopping or walking. I’d hit 15.8K, so yeah fuck it. Keep going until you get to 16.

16k done. And, I’d also learned my lesson. I’d cello taped some money together (I can’t bare the sound of the stuff jingling) and we went off to shop, bought water, revelled in my brilliance, and realised that stopping and walking just emphasises all the pain you’ve created. Blisters and burning feet. The sign of a good run. Remember back in the day when that minute of walking during the Couch to 5k app was the shortest minute of your life? When you were dying after 1.5minutes of running? Well, you’ve just run for 2hrs. 2damn hrs!

And yes the picture of the husband below is blatantly plagiarised from a motivational picture I’ve seen before, but I don’t care. It’s pretty, I’m brilliant, I’m slow, I still don’t care and I just might be able to do this half marathon without ending up on the buggy bus!