The Countdown

Fifteen days to go until the Leeds 10K. I haven't trained for two weeks and I'm still not over the Man Flu.

But fear of failure has driven me out of bed and for the first time onto the roads. Up to now I have trained in the gym on various treadmills but with only two weeks left, I have a lot of training to catch up on.

So, how did I do this morning?

Looking on the plus side, I was out for 30 minutes and didn't stop moving forward the whole time. Three hours after my run, I don't feel too bad. But 3 hours ago it was a very different picture. For the first time in 20 years I was reminded why I hated cross country running.

I began by warming up, stretching and then a brisk walk for a couple of minutes. I turned on my I Pod and began the motivational sounds and comments of one of those large, smiling American types. The first stage of this background noise was incantations......

"All I need is within me now", "Every day in every way I'm feeling better and better!"

The first incantation phase lasts for three minutes and at the end there is a period of 30 seconds of wheezing.

Actually, that isn't part of the program but that was all that I could hear. My heart was pounding and my windpipe had shrunk to a third of it's normal size.

Had I really become so unfit in only two weeks?

Next came the terrain. Today I was reminded that the outside has hills. These hills are much harder to run on than a treadmill. On the way up the first of these hills, I comforted myself that they are much easier to run down.

How wrong could I have been. When you weigh 19 stone running downhill becomes a battle of man against gravity, and gravity often wins. As I built up momentum and felt the wind in my hair (well, maybe not in my hair but at least I felt the wind against my nearly bald scalp) I initially thought..."this is great, I am really making progress". I could also hear the "All I need is within me now" incantation blasting from my I Pod.

Unfortunately I realised as I approached the bottom of the hill that all I needed wasn't actually within me now as, what I needed most was the ability to stop!....Ouch.

So I will take this as a wake up call and knuckle down over the next 15 days. And just in case today's experience wasn't enough to motivate me to train harder I received the race details yesterday. It appears that everyone goes home after 2 hours so, if i haven't finished within the time, I will be dodging the traffic.