Missed blogging sessions & My first half marathon : Part 1

I am not sure what is getting in the way of me blogging these past two weeks. I have been very busy, but that was true before! The last few days since the half marathon I have had a million thoughts running through my head and (not uncommonly for me) the overwhelming need to make lists. The half marathon actually marked the end of a tricky logistical period including selling my house, getting some time consuming tax and paper work activities out of the way and getting an assignment done for my finance study. I was eager for the half marathon to mark the end of the chapter, and I seem to have responded to it with a bit of panic at all that still remains to be done, rather than relief.

I have had some good training sessions, a nice easy Saturday 8k run the weekend before last, taking it easy at the outset and coming home strongly for a significant negative split. That day I did not hang around to do my usual post training yoga, I had to race home to sign the contracts on my house sale and the rest of the weekend was go-go-go. I really noticed the impact and suffered from low energy and very sore legs the next few days - I thought I was coming down with something until about Thursday.

I think the true culprit was not just lack of stretching but also poor nutrition as I have commented on a few times now. I have tended to respond to stressful periods in life by eating poorly and staying up late, though I know intellectualy those two things making things a lot worse!

Nonetheless, I was able to overcome feeling sore and exhausted at last Wednesday nights training to achieve the seemingly impossible task at training - after warmup jog and drills we were to do 4 x 1200m intervals with 400m slow jog in between. The aim was to get the same time or faster for each interval, and during each 1200 we were to build from a slow pace the first 300, faster from 300 - 600, faster again 600 - 900, and fastest 900 - 1200,.