I can run for miles and miles and miles

Just about fifty days until the London Marathon now.

In the whole of February, I have run more than a hundred miles, and this is more than I accumulated in February 2012 and in February 2011, so there’s no doubt about my ability to put in the extra effort.

I am not yet wavering in my motivation to go out on long runs or get out of bed at an insane hour to get a few miles in before going to work. A lot of other people would probably have tired of the endless running by this point, but I seem to have this uncanny knack of being able to focus on a task and see it through to the very end. My manager at work has commented on my admirable knuckling-down skills. I treat pretty much every task I do with the same level of determination and dedication.

Last weekend I was back in Essex, visiting family and friends. Went to a school friend’s stag party on the Saturday. There I indulged in the usual stag party “activities” and had a few drinks but not too many because after arriving home at 1am, I was out of bed again at 7am to do another long run at 9:30am. 

Virtually all of my training over the last three years I have done alone. Every step on every pavement, all by myself, alone with just my thoughts, and the only interaction I have with fellow human beings are when I pass some other runner or get shouted at by drivers to "watch where I'm f*cking going." That’s the kind of person I am, really. I prefer to run by myself at my own pace, with nobody to hold me back and slow me down, or speed past me and make me exhausted trying to catch up. However, last Sunday, I changed all that and decided to run with my uncle and cousin, both of whom are also running the London Marathon. 

It was nice to have a bit of company for a change, even though I did not run alongside them for most of the time because I was a fair bit faster than both of them. Whenever I ran past them, I would carry on to the end of the road and run back to where they were, run alongside them and carry on again. By doing this, I was able to run a total of 18 miles even though I had run on exactly the same streets as my uncle who had done 13.

We ran along the streets of Chingford and Woodford Green. All very pleasant, despite the cold, and a welcome change of scene. There was this very nice pond in Chingford, and I did three circuits of the pond. I could have run twenty miles if I had wanted to, just running round and round that pond. It's a rather nice little pond.  One can tire of running up and down the same old streets all the time. After a while, the streets just repeat themselves like the background to a cheaply made Hanna-Barbera cartoon, so it was a joy to run somewhere different. I would do it a bit more often but tend not to run to areas that I am not familiar with, just in case I get lost, so it was a good thing that I had some company.

I'm preparing for another long run this weekend. We're going into the month of March now, so this is where the runs get longer and more intense, before I start tapering down in April. Surprisingly, I haven't managed to injure myself again but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. This is my big problem, a slight lack of confidence in my own ability. Each time I go out for a run, I constantly worry to myself: "is this going to be the one where I get injured and my leg breaks/knee pops/foot falls off/I die?"