Time for some time out. Actually not true. End of time out!
Had a few weekends of back to back races, with differing degrees of disaster.
Oh dear.
First up was the Purbeck Marathon in Dorset. Had been looking forward to that one for ages. Andrew and I stayed down in Dorset for the weekend with friends Chris and Ellie, and Saturday night we spent carb loading (or, eating pizza and blackberry crumble). On Sunday Andrew, Chris and I ran the race. I loved the first half, heading westwards along the Jurassic coast in the warm sunshine with fantastic views. High up on the cliffs above the shimmering water I felt on top of the world! High up....oh, here we are in Dorset, and I soon remembered the relentless hills of the Dorset 100. But what goes up comes down and all that. And so it happened with my mood too. At around half way I suddenly started to find it hard, and Chris and Andrew were both doing amazingly well, and I all of a sudden started to struggle in my mind, left on my own behind all my 'team'. I get sometimes into a dark spiral of thoughts, but this happens less and less as I feel better lately, so at the time I also started to beat myself up for feeling like this right in the middle of something important. Which made it worse...etc etc... Some dark miles followed, but at the bottom of (another) long hill I got chatting to a guy who turned out to be from Bolton, so some Northern chat cheered me up. At the top of the hill the route went along a high ridge for a good few miles, and I soon started to overtake people, and my confidence suddenly came back and my mood lifted. The last few miles were much better and I felt strong as I finished the last couple of miles and had a nice little sprint finish along the seafront. Congratulations to Chris (his first official marathon) and Andrew who both did amazing!
The next weekend Andrew and I did the Sussex Stride, 51 miles around the South Downs area. I loved it, a beautiful hot day, running, and in one of my favourite places! Also, good news in the bag front, after years of buying cheap backpacks and having trouble with them rubbing my back when running, I finally bit the bullet and bought an expensive proper running rucksack. It's an Ultimate Direction Adventure Vest and my, I wish I had bought it ages ago! It fits like a glove, is super comfortable (no back sores!!) and has 16 pockets. I love a good pocket. Had a little trouble remembering what was where with that many. It was totally worth the money. At about 40 miles in disaster struck as Andrew became ill, and started throwing up at the top of a hill. We made it to the next check point where he had to retire. I hung around for a while to make sure he was ok and could get back to the start ok (whilst also using the time wisely, and eating a bacon butty which the people on the checkpoint were brilliantly managing to make on a little stove, in the dark). Holy hell, it's dark. I've just realised. Now my running partner is laid out on the floor and is no longer working, I'm going to have to finish this thing by myself, and now it's dark and there are still 7 miles of South Downs to run across before the end. Crap. I don't like the dark. I hung around for a few more minutes in the hope that someone else might turn up who I could tag along with, but no one turned up. I headed off. It was just as terrifying as I thought, but apart from being sworn at by a drunk man coming out of a pub in a village I ran though, getting lost in a field, freaking myself out at least a million times that something was behind me and that shadows were ghosts, and talking out loud to myself the whole way, to keep myself company, I made it alive to the end! Where Andrew was, feeling better! Garry from the Chiltern Marathon was also there at the end, having finished ages ago, and managing to get heat exhaustion on the way around. My little cousin Sammy (who's actually 18 and over 6 foot, so technically not little) did a cracking walk coming in not much behind me - nice one!
The week after we did another marathon, the Amesbury Amble near Salisbury. The less said about this one, the better. I have renamed it Amesbury's Atrocious Amble. Nothing at all to do with the event, it's absolutely fantastic, but due to my performance, which was a shocker. I was really ill, had awful stomach pains, and barely even made it to the end. Ugh. I feel ill just thinking about it.
So that was two weeks ago. I've taken it very easy the last couple of weeks. Have been a bit scared that something was wrong, as have been struggling with my periods and feeling weak too, but have been checked out at Dr and nothing wrong so far. Could just be a blip i suppose.
I'm going right back to basics and building up my running again. I actually feel like a run now, whereas I haven't for a while, so maube that's a sign its time to start again!
Have a great weekend! X
