This post originally appeared on Ben’s old blog, Running From the Physio.
Due to various goings on, I didn’t run as often as normal in the fortnight leading up to my half marathon. This was partly planned, as I was scheduled to taper before the race, and partly unplanned, as I missed a number of the scheduled runs for a few reasons: mostly laziness. Therefore, rather than post two pretty short posts, I’ve gathered them together into one.
Tuesday: 3.01 miles @ 8:31 min/mile
Back to the evening for this Tuesday run. I had some issues with my left knee (as always), but they really only bothered me towards the start of the run, and faded away as I was going. The pace was pretty easy over this distance.
Wednesday: 2 miles planned
I dropped this run, due to a combination of long hours at work, and some sort of a bug. I would obviously have preferred to have run it, and stuck to my schedule, but being the shortest of my runs, I wasn’t too bothered to lose it.
Thursday: 6.35 miles @ 8:29 min/mile
Having missed the run the day before, I was briefly tempted to lengthen this one to seven miles, but given that I was feeling a bit down because of the bug, I resisted the temptation. The run itself felt pretty good, pretty easy.
Saturday: Parkrun, 5km (3.11 miles) @ 8:38 min/mile
I had always intended to run this one relatively easily. Being the weekend before my inaugural half, I didn’t want to suddenly injure anything, and I also wanted to make sure that I my legs weren’t too tired. My slower pace was further enforced when I found myself running with my friend’s 10 year old son. To be fair to him, he normally tears around the course at a pretty good lick, certainly sub-8 minute miles, but today he didn’t seem to be feeling too good. His Dad got stuck further back with another child, and it was actually a very good excuse to take it easy!
Sunday: 8 miles planned
I would love to blame this entirely on some sort of a bug, but mostly I just felt tired and lazy, and didn’t go for a run. The tiredness might have been caused by a bug, but really? Lazy.
Tuesday: 2 miles planned
Lazy, lazy, lazy.
Wednesday: 4.06 miles @ 9:40 min/mile (unplanned)
Lazy… oh no, hang on! I missed Tuesday’s two miles, and decided that I would get whatever mileage I could face done and Wednesday and call that it. I knew I had a busy day planned on Thursday (I worked over 12 hours in the end) and so couldn’t rely on getting anything further done. I took a nice, easy, slow trot around the block.
Thursday: 5 miles planned
As mentioned, my long day at work saw for this run!