For the last 14 months running has been a big thing in my life – with the pinnacle (in distance, if not speed) being my completion of the Hackney half marathon in June (the picture is of me struggling to get through the 10th mile).
The core run each week has been the Finsbury (or occasionally some other) parkrun – an approximate 5km timed run.
The Finsbury Park course is famously tough – two laps of one long, relatively gentle climb and one short, relatively steep hill.
Back in June, in heavy training for the Hackney half, I got my PB down to 23 minutes and 17 seconds on that course. Since then I have run it three times – every time worst than the last and every time above 25 minutes (today’s was a very bad 25’59”).
Training runs, too, have not been distinguished by speed (though I am gradually returning to longer distances as I train for the Royal Parks half marathon in October – sponsor me (for Oxfam) here) and two 10k races have shown me post times that were slower than the first 10k race I ran (which was in May).
What’s gone wrong? Running performance is pretty much all in the mind or at least it is about the mind’s tolerance of pain and discomfort – and I just do not want it badly enough, I think. Today I did a pretty decent first lap – the GPS on the phone is a bit iffy, typically reporting too fast a time/over-reporting the distance run, but I managed the first 2.5km in about 11’50” – not brilliant but not a million miles from that PB time, but then I effectively decided I didn’t like the discomfort much and so the second lap was in around 14’08”.
The thing is, I had gone out this morning with the intention of ending my run of worsening performances, but in the end just didn’t want that enough. I can try again next week, I suppose.
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