Blog season starts again

I'm back to blogging now that i'm starting my next marathon cycle in preparation for the Fukuoka marathon on December 5th. The start of the program was yesterday and it turned out to be a day off as me and 9 other friends and team mates all had a stomach flu which kept us all in bed. Julie also got it and somehow managed to stay at work for half a day before being sent home. I on the other was either in bed or lying on the sofa watching TV. I had been waking up during the night and running to the toilet but didn't feel too bad but once we woke up, Julie was sick and she suggested I get a finger down my throat to see if it made me feel any better. I literally walked into the bathroom, saw the bowl and started something that replicated a volcano. It did, however make me feel a little better and I thought I could muster a jog. As I was putting my shoes on though, I started to feel achy but decided to press on as the weather was great and I thought the fresh air would help. I jogged to the trail in front of the house and at 38 seconds stopped and walked back. Now the pain started to kick in. I forced some cereal down my throat and tried to sleep in front of the TV. I didn't have much success with this so I finally got round to watching this years London marathon. It was really interesting how things panned out at the front of the field and I took a few notes on how the leaders handled different situations. Julie finally came home and we managed to take a nap which helped a huge amount and made me feel at least half alive. For the next 2 hours I was running around town trying to get all my forms and documents together for my visa for China. The guys at UKA had been sending me forms but they had all gone to my junk mail and I just happened to catch one before I deleted it. I was a bit panicked as I only had a couple of days to get everything as the Chinese consulate is shut for 10 days due to a national holiday. This means i'm still cutting it close but hopefully it arrives in time. Just as I arrived home, I started to feel bad again so we had some soup and bread, lots of water, watched an episode of Chopped and then headed to bed at 8.30pm.

This morning was a lot better after sleeping for 11 hours. We didn't feel great but at least we could get on with our days without too much pain. I managed to get out for a very slow 90 mins on the trails which made me feel good mentally but as soon as I got out of the shower after the run, I started to get chills and couldn't stop shivering. I managed to get a little food down before heading to bed to try and sleep it off. It took a long while but I think I managed about an hour of sleep and then it took another 30 mins to actually get out of bed. What did make me feel better was a nice cup of Yorkshire tea that I had brought back with me. I'll try and get out for another run later to see how I feel and hopefully I can do the scheduled 12 mile steady state run tomorrow morning.

Last week's race (Great North Run) was a disaster for me. As good as I was feeling in the lead up and as mentally ready as I was, the last 12 hours before the race really messed things up. For no apparent reason, I fell asleep at 11pm and woke up 12am and was then awake until the start of the race. This meant that it was tiring just trying to warm up, never mind racing fast. I also made the mistake of drinking too much coffee before the race just to try and get my body at a normal status and this lead to me being dehydrated throughout the race. I started to feel dizzy and confused at around 5 miles and it took a lot of mental strength to make it to the finish. I'll learn from the experience and try to never let that happen again.

The next few days after the race was just all easy running and recovering. I had a good night out with friends in Edinburgh and then hopped on the plane the next day to Phoenix. I stayed the night there with Julie's parents as I didn't want to drive up the road tired and got a good nights sleep. It was so good to finally get back to Julie and stay in my own bed again. It really wasn't a long trip back to the UK but it felt like a long two weeks.

Saturday's long run was really encouraging for me as I felt really good and ran fast without pushing myself at all. We ran at a place called A1 and it is an out and back run with 7 miles up hill, a hilly 7 mile loop at the top and then 7 miles back down to the start. Everyone else was running a lot shorter so I put my ipod on and just got into my own pace from the start. I felt like I was cruising the whole was never trying to run fast, I was just going with how my body felt. I ran the 21 miles faster than I ever had and didn't really feel tired afterward. This let me know that I am pretty fit and ready for the training that awaits me.

So day 1 of marathon training was seriously bad, day 2 a little bit better, hopefully everyday from here on out will just keep getting better and better. At least I got the flu on day one rather than right before the race.