Running crossroads

So another week, and some more running. After a rest day on Monday (also slightly hungover from Sunday night), Tuesday was another 13 miler to follow-up the 13 miles on soft sand from Sunday morning. With my backpack of around 4kgs I went round in a leisurely 1hr 47 mins and generally felt pretty good, but was tiring towards miles 12 and 13, but understandable. This week is a hard week, as I'm off to New Zealand at the weekend to watch England play the All Blacks which will be great fun. However this puts pressure on my week as invariably long run now has to be done during the week, and this means a Friday night 18-20 miler if I can.

The reality though at the moment is that I'm pretty shattered. Following the 13 miler on Tuesday night, I've done two other hard sessions back-to-back as well. Wednesday night was some hill reps. Like I've mentioned before, I have a real nasty hill near me which is great for running up and down. So after a mile and a half warm-up last night I went off and did 9 reps of that. The hill is bang on 200 metres long and there's a total elevation of 108ft, so it makes it about a 1 in 5.5, so pretty tough going. After the first 2 reps I knew I was in for a hard night, and still had the two 13 milers in my legs from Sunday and Tuesday too. I also probably started out doing them a bit too hard (around 80%), but dropped that to about 60% and got through them. Each time I do the hill reps I have to do one more than I did before, so tonight was 9. By number 9 I was literally ready to thrown up :) But I managed things OK, and did the 1.5 miles to warm down.

The shins are really giving me grief though at the moment, and have been now for about 3 weeks. God knows how I've managed to keep the mileage up with the hassles Ive been getting from them. Today was another interval session, again a mile warm-up followed by one mile slow, one mile quick, then half a 1/3 mile slow and then 2/3 a mile quick. Again, was was beat afterwards and I think my body needs a rest - so much for the 20 miler planned tomorrow. We'll see how we go.

I think the whole shins situation is also getting me down a bit. I've just looked at my training and in the 9.5 months I've been training I've managed to train (i.e. run) at least 3 times a week every week. No wonder I'm shagged! I also think I probably need a good old massage on the legs too. Its a combination of a few things that I think I need to do to get back on focused again. I'm finding training really hard at the moment, and quite boring at times too, but only another 8.5 months to go!!! Maybe a little rest of a 3 days would do me good. Although I have another marathon coming up soon, and really need to get a couple of longer runs in before that - we'll see how I feel tomorrow. Guess this is what training is all about, the highs and the lows!