After the impromptu 20 miler yesterday I slept late today. In fact I didn't go out for my first ten miles until midday. And it was a pretty good run. I felt fine.
Afterwards I showered and had lunch of two big baked potatoes, steamed broccoli and smoked fish. Oh yeah, and a couple of slices of bread and butter.
Then a lie down seemed in order, just a little nap.
Anyway, three hours later I was struggling to wake up. I was really reluctant to get moving and go out again. My left achilles tendon felt a bit dodgy, my heart rate was up to 49 beats a minute, I felt a bit dehydrated and my piss looked decidedly green. And anyway, if I went out running now it would be dark before I got back.
I was very close to wimping out.
But it's the beginning of April already. Just two months till I start out from John O'Groats. I need to put in the miles. I reckoned I would start out slow and if my achilles got worse I would walk back.
I started out and I wasn't feeling great, but I told myself that there would be lots of times on the road from John O'Groats to Lands End when I would be feeling worse. There were lots of times running between Inverness and Glasgow last summer when I felt like shit, my mojo was low and there was just no fun left in it.
What you have to do then is find the pace that works, you have to find the rhythm, and you have to remember, you have to allow your body to remember, that this is what you were made to do. Each one of us has the body an endurance runner, selected over a couple of million years of evolution.
Bottom line, you just keep running. And so I did, and pretty soon I was feeling OK, and pretty soon after that I was feeling fine and by the time I had got to the top of that last tough hill and was two thirds of the way through the run I was feeling fantastic.
A second 20 mile day and a good start to another 120 mile week. Perfect.
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