Saturday, January 31, 2015

stop the clock, I'm done

Thank fuck it's over.

I've crossed the imaginary finish line and achieved my made up goal. And now...well I don't know really. Anyway, today's run.

Another ropey night's sleep with an hour lost to a coughing fit. I woke up almost dreading today's run. I timed the Lemsip to kick in once I got back from AJ's swimming lesson. The ladies were all heading off for a snooze and I went out and did a final beach loop for the month and for Janathon.

I needn't have been so anxious. The run was incident free, taken easily and with a couple of stops to take photos and to chat to the lifeguards at the beach. I decided to not stop for water today, after the coughing fits it triggered yesterday. That seemed to work for me; not too dehydrated, no coughing fits while on the hoof.

I got home and uploaded the run then checked my total. runningfreeonline was shortchanging me vs. Strava. Annoying. Nevermind. I could go and do another 100m, dressing-gown-dash style, up and down the street and make sure I was where I wanted to be - the equivalent mileage of 31 half marathons in 31 days. I think the difference is due to Strava filling in the 1.3km gap in one of my runs where I forgot to restart my Garmin - schoolboy error. runningfreeonline cuts you no such slack. Anyway, head to Strava to see what I've been doing. Including today.

And this is what 100m in a cow-print dressing gown and Ugg boots, in 25degrees, looks like. It isn't pretty.


So how has the month gone? Jan 1st was the traditional Six Foot Track try-out. It's a semi-brutal 34km that I use as a the litmus test of whether I should even consider 6ft. I got through it OK. The next few days were unsurprisingly achey. A lot of people will tell you that aching muscles should be stretched or rested, but I don't do either. I've not stretched at all this January, and you can't really rest when you have to run every day. Put the miles in and your body will get used to it. HTFU. Once into the second week I was tracking well and the third week was also pretty good. Sweaty and a hydration nightmare, but the miles were clocking up.

Then the wobbles set in. I did something silly on the 22nd and chased a number. I put in a big day to get to 500km. Then I compounded the error by doing a midday 20k the following day in some pretty warm conditions. That wiped me out on Friday 23rd, which may have broken Sal's "don't turn yourself into a zombie" rule but I figured it was my birthday so she could cut me a little slack. I threw in a light Saturday, but trouble was on the horizon when the weather changed dramatically after the weekend. Initially I thought the cooler, wetter weather was a godsend, but I think it threw my body into all sorts of thermal confusion. I finished a couple of runs feeling cold, shivering. Wednesday night something crept up on me and I've had the sweats, the shivers and the shivers and sweats ever since. Plus a hacking chest cough.

I took a couple of days off work without even remotely taking the piss. I was lucky to have a few miles in the bank that meant I could still get to my goal with three relatively light days of 10 and 11k. I'll not lie, they haven't been a whole lot of fun, each one making me wonder how much I was adding to the time to recover from this bloody cold. The daily ritual of checking the Janathon totals and blogs did not have me convinced that I'd done enough to ease up.

But it's over. I achieved my personal goal, knocked out my second largest month ever and have laid down a decent slab of Six Foot base training. I concede 11hours to the Janathon guys in the UK. For some time there has only been one guy with a chance of catching me, the misfortune of some others being good news for me - such is the nature of the beast. I think I've done enough, but he's good and I give him a definite target and it finishes on a Saturday. I'll keep checking to the totals, but for now I just need to get rid of this cold.

Janathon Grand total - 654.1km. Or thereabouts. Certainly not less.

PS
This isn't supposed to come over as all negative. I'm just really tired right now. Sorry.

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