I just wrote about 1,000 words and then realised it wasn’t really a blog post. It was just me thinking through my training plan for my running for the summer. I even went and planned out my mileage for the whole summer. Then I felt frustrated because according to my plan I will only get to peak mileage just before a half marathon I already have booked in for October, which doesn’t seem good enough. And then I realised what I’d written wasn’t a blog post which frustrated me even more.
In both cases I’m definitely feeling in one of those moods where nothing seems good enough. I’m over-reaching, trying to make things perfect, trying to find the one key thing that will make everything amazing.
Honestly, I think I just have a little too much time on my hands at the moment due to not being able to train properly. It’s great to be able to run again after a few days off but obviously I’m still missing my club sessions, and just seeing other people.
I’m hoping to really take my running training up a notch this summer and find a lot more consistency and apply more strategy to it. The problem I think will be the mental side of things. I think I will miss going to running club twice a week. I’m reducing it to once a week because I don’t want to do the sessions the club does twice a week. I really need to put an easy/steady run in on a Thursday instead of half-heartedly doing a speed session that is both unnecessary and potentially injury-provoking. But I do think I’ll miss having something to go and do on a Thursday evening.
The other mental issue I think I’ll have is that I’ll probably miss the excitement and adrenaline of going all in at parkrun and races, which is a key part of the strategy because I think when I do go all-in at those things it puts too much strain on my body and stops me from staying consistent. I also, in the case of races especially, end up having to cut mileage before and after them, which again affects the consistency. So I know I have to cut that all-in stuff out, but actually doing it I think I’ll find kind of hard.
In the run up to my ultra, I managed to be really focused. Obviously having a big scary thing like that is a very easy way to give yourself focus. I knew that getting the miles in each week was more important than anything else. So because of that I was able to cut my intensity and not get carried away or let my pride push me to try too hard. I think the only exception was my last Tuesday night club session where it was one of my favourite sessions and I had some people in my group who were just a little bit faster than me, which pulled me round at a really nice pace. That is, it felt really nice until the next day when I realised I was very tired.
But I do need to try to find that focus over the summer and to hold on to that idea of consistency being key, mileage consistency being key, and to keep the intensity of my harder workouts just that little bit lower to ensure that I can put that consistency in. Possibly one way to stop my mind from being my own worst enemy and leading me astray will be to throw in at least one and maybe two races or parkruns where I do actually let myself do a race effort. I’ll have to see how I feel though, because the last thing I want is to end up holding back on mileage due to worrying about an upcoming race or all-in parkrun.
Honestly, I’m starting to feel like I’m just totally overthinking this stuff now. I know it’s due to the enforced rest around the ultra and just missing proper training. But I’m probably going to try to take a break from writing about running now.
Still not happy with this as a post but I don’t think I’m going to get anything better out of myself now. I suppose some days are just like that and you just have to do your best and let go of the need for stuff to be perfect, or even any good at all!