Prologue - 29th March 2015

I am somewhere along the River Rea cycle path, past Kings Norton park. British Summer Time has emerged, as promised, with wind and driving rain and I am definitely struggling. The whole point was to run angry, to work out my frustrations, but although the mind is willing the legs and refusing to play. It's too late to turn back and besides, there are other runners from the club coming up behind. 

Yesterday was the Midlands Road Relays, and I ran an absolutely terrible race. The slowest of the whole team, only by one second, but it might as well have been one minute. I could rationalise it by blaming the travel up and down the M6 the day before, arriving back home at one in the morning. Blaming the fact that my tea last night comprised a couple of sandwiches bought from a late night Sainsbury's. That everyone else in the team was reaching the end of their marathon training, doing thirty or forty miles more than me each week. But the simple fact is, that I wasn't good enough.

I used to laugh at the other runners in the club who document every training mile, obsess over the minutiae of every race. I realise that I have become just the same. In an odd way, this bodes well for the next few months.

Last May I ran the Liverpool Marathon. The training was the hardest I've ever done, only surpassed by the last mile of the race. In the end I exceeded my expectations and ran 3:05:29 - only thirty seconds outside a Good for Age qualifying time for the London Marathon. At the time this didn't bother me, but over the next few months it began to eat away at me and, with finding a gap in my ever-ending cycle of work and study, decided that this year I would attempt to reach that qualifying time. 

So on the 22nd August I will be running another marathon and, in keeping with my impulsive and generally irrational nature, will be doing it in Reykjavik. 

I was going to start this blog in a few weeks time when the training begins, but after this weekend decided that now might be more appropriate. Every story needs a journey, so why not begin at a low ebb? Hopefully it will make the achievement all the sweeter...

This morning I pushed on, the ache in the legs subsided and the last few miles were almost bearable. After drying off, I checked my run on Strava (what was I saying about obssession?) and found that I beat my previous best time heading back along Cartland Road.

Today's learning: always prepare properly and prepare to push on.