14 Days to Go: Sick As a Dawg
When life gives you lemons make lemonade. A phrase credited to Elbert Hubbard. It is one that really sums up my last peak week.
I’d gone into this final peak week eager to crack a strong week out after having been in the USofA for the week before. The plan laid out had a couple of great sessions. A long run with 22k of tempo running, a parkrun shake out and a tempo session with alternating distances and paces. I was to be at home the whole week too.
As the Fonz would say, Happy Days!
Things took a turn for the worse on Wednesday night. We have a wee cavapoo called Nugget. He’s ace. He sleeps all night in a crate. And usually around 0730am we have to force him out of bed.
Wednesday into Thursday however his stomach was doing somersaults and he needed out every 90+ mins or so. Which mean pretty much zero sleep. Around 2am when I was still awake I decided getting at up 0430am for a marathon run with efforts was off the table. Lemons.
I quickly rejigged my plan and ditched the idea of a parkrun to do my long run Saturday and switched Thursday to be 1 hour with 5k tempo. At lunchtime, after only about 2 hours sleep I did my run. Running on feel I was pleased to run a 17:33 5k. Which considering I was on fumes was decent. Lemonade.
Alas, poor Nugget was to have ongoing challenges with squirty shitting and needing out constantly. By Saturday morning I’d had around 10 hours sleep in 3 days. Between Louise and I we were out with him at 11pm, 0030am, 0200am, 0430am and 0615am. More lemons.
Now, if it wasn’t my last long run and knowing Sunday morning wasn’t viable to move the run to, I may have shifted or ditched the long effort. In reality, trying to do 25 miles, with half at MP effort, was a big ask before the fatigue factor was accounted for.
Surprisingly, Saturday’s run started ok. 10k close to MP and then 1k in 3:35 was decent but I could totally tell I was melted. Instead of repeating the 10k+1k sequence I did 5k at effort and then plodded to 21 miles. That 21 miles was a much better outcome than I expected in mile one. Was it the outcome I wanted at the start of the week? God no? But it was defo Lemonade.
I will reflect more on the block to now in next week’s blog. In all honesty, this has been one of the most fragmented, frustrating and oddest blocks I have had in years. Yet, I have still averaged 80 miles or so a week and also got 3 quality sessions in each week. I sit here currently lamenting what I didn’t do. I know the way my mind works I will switch to what I did do in the next week. And from there, I look forward to TO with gusto!
Thanks for reading!
(Written by James Stewart)
