Saturday 1/5 - Some thoughts

Well, it's 9.30am and I'm sitting on my sofa after having purposely dragged myself out of bed to go a long run. The weather looks grim. It's not raining yet but it looks as though there's a 99% chance it will soon. Weather news says it will dry up this afternoon but remain cool.

Now, I'm sitting here debating whether to go or not. Point is, I am SO tired. I'm positively knackered even though i've had about 10 hours sleep. This past week has been such a blur. Been in work every day for the back of 7 and leaving at half four trying to build up some flexi. Had a dispute at work one day too, which took a lot out of me. Then an interview on Thursday which, between the interview itself and the drive to Edinburgh and back at rush hour, completely exhausted me. Then up again early yesterday to try and keep that flexi up so I could take yesterday afternoon off. Handed in a hard copy of my dissertation finally yesterday afternoon and managed to chat to some staff and friends at Strathclyde who I hadn't seen for ages. That was lovely. I then met another person at Strathclyde about a course I'm interested in studying...then literally bolted for the subway to the Doctors where I missed my appointment and had to wait until the end of the appointments to get one.

All in all it's been a fairly stressful week. In fact probably the most stressful in a while. Certainly a busy week. Last night I tried to relax but I have some write ups to do for my other job (they're staring at me menacingly as I sit here typing). I didn't get round to doing it and instead watched tv and had dinner with my dad. I ended up not going to sleep until about 11.30ish.

Now my previous post had said I was looking forward to being stress-free this weekend to do my final 20+ miler of the season. However, even just typing that is making me want to go back to bed. I still have 2 exams next month I'm sitting for my night classes. Eeek - scratch that, one is THIS month on the 27th. With the marathon on 23rd and the other exam on 2nd June, I feel like I should be focusing on the exams rather than the marathon right now. It's weird though, because throughout Uni I managed to strike an OK balance between training for the marathon and doing my exams. Now I am so tired I just don't want to run and would rather study. Plus I'm still getting pain in my Achilles tendon so this would be a good excuse to let it rest.

So I'm kinda stuck. I have only run once this week, a good 7.8 miler at a steady pace. But that's it. And this is supposed to be one of the "peak" training weeks. I fear if I don't run this weekend I will feel so guilty come Monday that I'll go out and do it anyway, but will feel guilty all weekend up to that point. So I won't sleep as well, and will just be tired. Plus I'd rather get the run done this morning so I can focus on study and play tomorrow and Monday.

Argh. If anyone else has ever felt this way please tell me. I feel I'm the only one. The few other people (ok, one other person) I know who run seem to want to do it all the time. He's joined a running club, Kilbarchan AAC and now he is really pushing himself to run well. I feel as though I'm stuck in a bit of a rut here. I am really looking forward to doing the marathon but have sort of lost enthusiasm for 20+ mile training runs, espeically in this weather. Perhaps it was "the fall" which uncovered that feeling in me, I don't know.

My running options really are to run out somewhere (which I like doing better than out and back) or to run out and back. My parents are walking Conic Hill today and Derek is away up to Ness for the weekend so I could work in my parent's plan to my own. Problem is they'd want me to pick them up from Balmaha, so I could only really run to Drymen to pick up the car. That means I'd need to do 8 miles min around about here first, and have that blo*dy the-most-boring-part-of-the-WHW between Beech tree and Gartness at about 16 miles. I'd be feeling a bit rubbish then anyway and that could be the end of the run if it's raining too.

Oh well, I feel better for having ranted about it. Guess I should get on with whatever I'm going to do so that I don't just sit here and waste time. Sigh.