Going the Extra Mile
I don’t know if you know this, but training for a marathon is hard. Like, really hard. I’m not sure why I’ve been so hell bent on doing the Nike Women’s San Francisco Marathon (apparently I have a deep rooted love of hills?), but I sure as hell wasn’t prepared for the training. With the marathon now just six weeks away (and two half marathons to do in the meantime), panic is starting to set in. I’ve really been struggling with training, thought I’d lost my running mojo altogether, but this weekend, I went out of my way to find it again and get back on track. And I think it worked.
See, the main thing that hits you when you go from training for a half marathon to a full one is the increase in mileage. Your weekly long runs really are long. Ten miles, 15 miles, 18 miles and up and I’ve really been struggling with them.
I’ve just been all off. I couldn’t get in my zone. I wasn’t enjoying it. That super hero feeling that I love so much just couldn’t be found. I couldn’t stop constantly thinking about how far I had to go. I felt disheartened, frustrated and angry. Here I am, supposed to be motivating my wonderful Team Bangs on the Run girls to run a half marathon, while I’m training for a full one and hadn’t had a decent run yet.
I decided to really look at what might be causing this mental block for me. When I started running, I ran alone, with music. After I did the Paris half marathon, I decided to stop running with music so I could focus on my breathing. At first, that was great, but as my runs got longer, it just got lonelier. Since moving back down to London, I have always run with other people. It dawned on me that while the company is great, maybe what I really needed was to run alone again.
So, I made a plan, this past Saturday, I was going to get up at 5am, get the first train to the other side of London and run home. I love to run early in the morning (another issue with running with others is that nobody wants to get out of bed at the ass crack of dawn) and I thought this would be the perfect run for me to run with an iPod again to give me a new energy. I would change the route (most of the runs I’ve done have been along the canal, which is lovely, but can get boring after a while) and run through the streets. I like to see people, buildings and activity when I run.
I got up at 4.50am on Saturday, put my running kit on and was about to head out the door when I realised I’d lost my bank card. I had no cash on me and always like to have my bank card with me on a run just in case of emergencies. This threw me right off. My run was canceled. I was devastated. I had looked forward to this run all week – I really wanted it to be a game changer, to get me out of my funk. I sat on the edge of my bed at 5.30am, in my full running kit and cried, because I couldn’t go for a 15 mile run. Who’d have thought a year ago that THAT would ever happen?
Turns out I had left the bank card in a shop the day before and they still had it. Rejoice! So, I planned to do the run on Sunday. I got up early again, got the train over to Holland Park in West London, ready to run all the way to Stratford in East London. I got off the train, put my headphones on, set my watch and I was off.
I ran through Notting Hill, down Oxford Street and through Holborn with barely a soul around. I got a little lost, but kept running. Before I knew it, I’d run 8 miles. At mile 9 I took an energy gel to power me through my last few miles, going through Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Mile End in East London. I got to Stratford with a smile on my face and more energy in the tank had I wanted to continue. I clocked just over 12 miles.
I needed it to be just me, my thoughts and the streets. I needed the eerie quiet of a London Sunday morning, knowing I was putting in the work while the city slept. I needed to know that I wouldn’t stop, that I have it in me, that I CAN do it. I needed the super hero feeling.
Somewhere in among all of that, I got my running mojo back. And it felt good.
I’m running two half marathons and the San Francisco Women’s marathon in aid of Refuge. If you’d like to donate, please check out my Just Giving page.
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Tags: marathon training, Nike Women's San Francisco Marathon, running, Team Bangs on the Run
