I am just over a week out from Newport marathon.
It should be the ”finisher”, to round off one of my 40 before forty goals. It’s a compromise on “Run a marathon in every major UK city” (because it turns out many major UK cities don’t have marathons) in which I decided I would run a marathon in the 3 mainland countries that make up the UK instead. I’ve already done London and Edinburgh so that just left a marathon somewhere in Wales. And so here we are.
Except things haven’t gone so well this time. My training has been inconsistent and ineffective (sometimes my own fault, sometimes not) and I’m battling poor sleep and fatigue as part of a huge range of perimenopause symptoms (more on that another day). On top of that, a ‘niggle’ in my foot which was giving me tenderness upon waking is now shouting at me when running too.
My gut instinct is that it’s peroneal tendonitis, but not from too much training, rather from the huge reduction in my strength training because of ~life~ which means my previously strong muscles are withering away and my feet/ankles are picking up the slack and getting pissed off about it.
Sadly, Newport doesn’t do deferrals and the entry change cut-off flew past weeks ago. So now I have a week to decide if I can hobble round 26.2 miles on shonky training and a dodgy foot.
Bugger.
I recently entered the Shropshire Shufflers’ Severn Bridges 10k in Shrewsbury (after a little bit of a kerfuffle where it wouldn’t accept my affiliated club name) and ran with Gaz to celebrate his birthday. Never expected Gaz to choose a 10k to as a birthday celebration and yet here we are; I like to think… read full entry »
I recently started reading 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald. The general gist of the book (so far) is that most people too fast in their training runs, and should slow down: 80% of training runs should be done at a low intensity level. At the same time, I’ve been reading more and more about zone… read full entry »
This is the next post in a series I started after realising recently that my apathy and laziness was causing weight gain and a relapse of my more severe PMDD symptoms. You can read the rest of the posts here, from oldest to newest: Lockdown Weight Woes Lockdown Goals: Week 1 check in Lockdown Goals:… read full entry »
As it’s a local race, and Shrewsbury Half Marathon was a personal best setter for me in 2018 (even with its hills!) I felt obliged to enter this year’s race as soon as entries were opened. Despite promising myself I’d remain marathon fit after completing Edinburgh marathon back in May, I had let my long… read full entry »
I currently have several posts in the works about specific aspects of my training — my macro counting, my latest runs, my weights progress — but I don’t quite have enough time or energy to give each their due, and so have fixed that by writing nothing. D’oh. To prevent an extended writers block I’ve… read full entry »
I first tried to take part in Juneathon in 2015, and managed to just about drag myself to day 7 before pitifully failing and never mentioning it again. (You can see how it went over on my other blog, but it’s not inspiring.) Of course, I’m a tad more active these days, so it seemed… read full entry »
If you’d have asked me this time last year whether I’d ever be able to run a marathon, I’d have probably laughed in your face. Not because I didn’t think I was potentially capable of running 26.2 miles, but because I knew that to do that sort of distance I’d have to train, and my… read full entry »
I run in barefoot shoes. Vivobarefoot, to be precise. Now, to describe a shoe as “barefoot” seems somewhat of an oxymoron, but barefoot shoes — shoes with a flexible, minimal sole with generally a zero drop between the heel and toe — are designed to give you that barefoot feeling but with added protection for… read full entry »
I am now about 2 weeks out from Edinburgh Marathon, with my last long run programmed for this weekend (20 friggin’ miles?!). I’m dreading this last long one, although I’m not sure why. As usual, I have full support of my running club who’re pacing me around different segments. Despite not having run the marathon… read full entry »
