Hopeless

Ultra training is not going ever so awesome. Although it was a slow slog I thought last Sunday's 23 would be a good springboard into a higher mileage week. But then I didn't run on Monday (tired and busy) or Tuesday (tired and busy). Still, Wednesday morning I knocked out a 'kind of' hard session - running to Musselburgh and doing  intervals on the way back, of 4 minutes hard and 3 minutes easy. Hard felt hard - it was into a cold, westerly wind. Not fast. So I was sitting at 33 miles for the week. Could I capitalise on this?

It turns out I couldn't. Thursday I was ....tired. Friday night I forced myself out for 10 round the seat in the dark. Okay, not a high mileage week but I thought if I had Saturday off then by Sunday I'd have some energy and I could do another long one.

So last week's totals were 43 miles spread over 3 runs. Not great, but maybe not that bad.

Then on Saturday (the weather was dismal), I was levering myself out of my chair where I'd been sitting doing course work on the computer when I pulled something in my left hip/lower back. Unbelievably, I seemed to be rather crippled! Peter made a lot of jokes about how much older I've been getting recently. I can only agree. That difficult transition from sitting to standing getting the best of me. By the evening it was still really sore and it looked like the next day was going to be a write-off. Off I went wearily to bed.

In the morning it seemed a bit better but it was pissing down outside. We put off a planned morning run until the afternoon when some brightness was forecast, so at about 3pm we were arriving in North Berwick, planning to run east along the coast to Aberlady and then run back the roads - our usual route in reverse.

Neither of us felt particularly special getting out of the car. The sun did come out, which was good, but it was  icy cold, and yet I was over dressed. I had lead in my legs and it was a huge struggle to run.  By Gullane I rebelled and told Peter there was no way I was running 18 miles and my preference would be for drinking coffee and eating cakes in Gullane before tackling the remaining 4 miles on road back to the car. He wasn't for it. I could at least run back along the coast. Without coffee or cake. Sigh. It was a long slow plod back into the cold easterly wind. In fact I don't think I've ever run that slowly.

It isn't encouraging. Which is a shame because in my head I'm quite up for doing the Fling. I've just ordered a new super-light rucksacky thing off the web and an insulated cup so I can have a coffee and a cake at Beinglass just when I'm needing it and then carry my empty insulated cup the last 12 miles in my new super-light ruck-sack. Good plan.

And now bleak, wet sleetiness is blowing past the window as I type. Think I'll go for a nap.

Some more photos over chez Pierre