Attack of the Terrible Run

Hooray I went for a run today! 🙂

And it was truly shitty. The worst run I have had in months, if not ever. I am a pretty ‘glass half full’ person but even I cannot put a positive spin on this one. I was up early (thank you Max the dog) and delighted to see the sun shining. As I live in the West of Ireland this can be a rare event and this Summer it has been very rare indeed.

I pulled on the running gear, all excited. This was my chance to get back into the groove! One of my main reasons for running is to get out into the fresh air and daylight and I was delighted to do just that. I had nothing special planned, just a 5k around a local trail with no hard and fast plan although by the time I had arrived I decided to do a fartlek run, jogging to recover between faster intervals as and when I felt like it. I began with my usual warm up routine of walking, jogging and a bit of a sprint and I was off.

It felt awful.

My legs were like lead and my head was worse. My lungs felt congested and like they had forgotten how to work. I went at a very steady (by which I mean slow, obviously) pace thinking I would warm up and get going. By 2k I still felt just as bad, if not worse. My legs felt huge, swollen and heavy. My brain just couldn’t convince me to keep going and I was slow and getting slower. Then my brain decided it was off too and felt like it just wanted to go to sleep.

By 3.5k I had stopped fighting my body and just lapsed into walks that got longer and longer. In the last km I tried to pick up the speed and just couldn’t be bothered. All in all, a very disappointing experience. I couldn’t fathom why. I haven’t run a huge amount in the last 2 weeks but did do 10k last Sunday without too much difficulty, so why was this proving so difficult? Could I really have lost all my fitness and speed in that short a length of time? I returned home in a foul mood and shouted at the kids, my husband and even Max.

Later in the day I took part in a 5k as a fund raiser for a local school. I chose to walk with my kids and watched as runners wizzed past. I have never felt less like one of them. By the time the walk had finished I was almost in tears despite being surrounded by family, friends, cake and sunshine. It was at this point that I realised what was going on. I have been experiencing depression for a couple of years and it is yet another reason why I run. I take medication for it and have been really well for 6 months. But today was simply a bad day. It happens. I don’t fully understand why it has hit today, nor why it affected my running so much this morning (if you know anything about this I would be REALLY interested to learn more).

As the day has gone on I have chilled out and taken care of myself. I can now see that running and walking were the very best thing I could have done and am just happy I got out at all. I thought I might get out again tomorrow but have had to change plans and be on the road at 5am so it will now have to wait, but I will try for a walk at least tomorrow evening. Wish me luck.

I forgot to mention that I have updated my Runtastic Leg Trainer Review with my progress and thoughts so far. You can see it here https://runningnotracing.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/runtastic-leg-trainer-a-review/

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