This morning I was running uphill into a big fat headwind when I saw a trailer captioned STRONGA – how very handy for me as I was very much in need of an inspirational slogan at that time. Out on my usual Sunday run but feeling a bit under-inspired, on one of those run days when the distance ambition in my head was not matched by the capacity of my legs.
Not by way of an excuse but aside from my body sluggishness, the weather today was a bit weird as the air temperature felt like August but the winds were more like those we get in November.
I am not training for any race and am in a bit of the doldrums training wise – even though I keep saying I don’t really need a race goal to keep running, and just want to run for running’s sake, it seems a struggle to keep training focused when there is no looming race deadline, or a run streak challenge to fulfil.
Earlier this year I contemplated signing up for a full marathon, but talked myself out of it – maybe next year. So then I thought I might just train for a marathon but not enter one – so was planning to start running longer distances, to see how it felt to run beyond my furthest distance to date of 13.1 miles , but I have not managed to run beyond 10miles since my last race in March.
It seems my need for a deadline to succeed pervades my running as it does everything else.
Goals aside – I am back into a running groove of weekend runs mostly with Alison, and we have a new favourite route that takes us from our usual start point pretty much downhill all the way to Stockbridge. There we sometimes round the run off with a coffee and then Alison’s husband very kindly meets us and takes us home – to save the uphill return leg.
Although I am not quite achieving any running greatness in terms of performance improvements – be that increased speed or distance, it is nice to try out new routes and make more of the social aspects of running , now we are both largely free of weekend parental responsibilities.
While I do take satisfaction from running faster, getting fitter and do harbour a small ambition to run a marathon one day- mostly I love running for friendship and sociability – for the shared confidences, the listening and the laughter, and as today’s run demonstrated the wide and varied topics of conversation we somehow manage to cover as the miles whizz past.
The unfinished sentence... 
Sorry, just finally making an attempt to catch up on some blogs I haven’t read yet. I enjoyed this post and I sympathise with the occasional perceived need to amp up the program. It’s tricky though, isn’t it? I’ve been cross-training a bit in the sense of adding cycling and a bit of hiking to the mix, trying to get back to running my favourite LSD of 18km at least twice a month. I find if I’m not careful, I start flirting with injury; if I am careful, I despair a bit of progressing as a runner. It’s clear there will likely be a peak sometime in this — what, decade? five-year period? — before I’ll never be able to add distance or speed, but I’d like to push that off as long as possible. Good to know there are others of us out there grappling to find the same balance.
Frances – nice to hear from you , and glad my post struck a chord. I am a wee bit in the doldrums with my fitness at the moment but trying to just keep doing my enjoyable social runs and not get too stressed about it. Earlier this yaer I was adding in some strength and speed work and that did make me feel stronger, but i struggle to motivate myself to do that without a PT or in a class .I have a mind to set myself a different challenge for next year ( maybe a marathon ) but to do that I want to get a good base of fitness in the winter. I think any kind of cross training can only be a good thing – for injury prevention and also to stave off boredom 🙂