I had to force myself to do this.

I promised myself a long run, then a run - it rained it was blowing a sou-westerer and it was about 11c at dusk. I check the radar again, waited for watch to charge - anything to delay the run. I looked at one number and knew I had to go - zero - the first time in 12 weeks I would not have clocked some k’s.

It was fresh, my heels were tight, my fraying leggings fell. But I continued on, wheezing with a perpetually elevated heart rate.

Then I started to hit a rhythm, the pounding and strains gave way to the ipod in my head, to bits of nursery rhymes and children’s television. It was almost as once the sweat ran, the pain stopped and the mind became free.

I know two things:

I needs to run more and and I need to write more.

I churn out bugger-all k’s these days. Each day just flows and ebbs with flotsom and jetsom, never ceasing to rest or pool. Kid, job, pregnant wife - repeat -and the day is done.

Actually I know other things.

I know what will happen if I don’t run, I know I’m tired and I know there aren’t enough hours in the day. I know that if I sting a good week together, usually I rest on my laurels and do nothing the next.

What I don’t know is how I am actually making progress.

I am not getting fatter. I struggle to fathom this circumstance myself. Maybe I have hit some milestone metabolism mark and things are finally going my way. Maybe I’m just eating a little better and drinking a little less.

I guess I need to do more - but not stop what I am doing.

Running is shit at the moment.

Everything has gone to shit.

I’m about this close to saying, ‘fuck it, I’m just gonna chuck it in and be a fat prick’

Why?

My foot is sore. Tendon damage they say, though the doc hasn’t called me back.

I train for 20 weeks to break 100mins for a half marathon and then my foot goes and I run 1:42 in pain. Everything is going to shit and I can’t stand it.

So I’ll stop for a week. We’ll see how that goes. Then I’ll have a crack, then an enforced lay-off. So basically I lose all momentum from my fitness.

If you haven’t picked up the underlying tone of depression here well I’m putting it out there now.

This is fucked.

Actually the only thing saving me is the fact I get to do nothing. I’m actually enjoying the extra time relaxing. I enjoy the fact I don’t have to run for 2 hours tomorrow.But in the same breath I feel guilty for not exercising, and I kinda want to - if it wasn’t raining and freezing. The internal battle of the wills is doing my head in. I should just stop, recover and then hit it again. But I kind of feel guilty that I don’t miss it enough.

It pisses me off.

Goals are disappearing quickly. But I have acheived from a base worse than this before and I can do it again, the annoying thing is can I hit the new targets from this point?

Fuck I wish I was healthy.

For some reason I feel like I am going nowhere.

I have run the 400kms to the end of march, 33 more than any other year, yet despite that considerable improvement I feel as if I have nothing to show for it.

I guess it is no PB’s and only a marginal weight loss. These are the goals I’m after and although some of the means are there I just don’t have the confidence (I should?). I’ve got about 3 weeks until my next race (a problem in itself) and I am really unconfident that I’ll get that 10k PB. I guess this is the point where I have to re-examine things.

Can I run a sub 3:30 marathon? I have no idea how I can. I am flat out running 5:20 6k runs, well not flat out, I actually have a fair bit in the tank, but I need to find that tank. I need to get up to that 176bpm average run more often and try and see just how hard my body can work. At the moment, I only do that in bursts - but I need to do it more often and for longer otherwise I’ll never make that improvement. I guess I need to run quicker to run quicker - in all forms.

I should be able to squeeze out sub 50min 10k street runs. Sure it will hurt, but the benefits will come.

With so much going on in my life, I can’t really focus on running as much as I would like, but I don’t think I could do much more. So if I’m doing my best, (which I am - I’m running to plan) why am I dissapointed? Are my goals too lofty or am I just a perfectionist? Probably a bit of both. I want to succeed at everything. My masters, teaching, being a dad and husband. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but maybe I’m just going to have to be happy with not acheiving the same levels that I have previously. That is hard to swallow.

I guess all I can do is keep running.

Running is a solo sport, and it can be a selfish sport.

At the end of the day it is you who follows your plan, does the array of sessions and logs the kilometres.

And logs the time.

Hours are spent training. Hours during weekends, after work and time when you are usually with your family, or should be doing something significantly more productive. The guilt that comes with this can be tremendous at times. Knowing you have work to do, professional or otherwise, floors to clean, a child to mind, and walking out the back door, hitting ‘start’ on your watch and leaving it all behind and trying to focus on the run ahead. It is not always easy to do. In fact is often hard to do.

And on selfishness, who do you race for? I race for me. I want to beat PB’s - not mates, not get medals or prizes, or the crippled kids in africa, I run for me. If those other boxes get ticked - fine. I read the stories in runner’s world about people raising cash by running across continents and, it does little for me. I want to read the bit on how I can improve my waistline.

Running is often described as an escapist pursuit. One where you leave the wolrd behind and just run. But for many the demands of life mean we cannot log 80km training weeks, even if our bodies allowed us. There simply isn’t enough time.

So at what point do you be selfish?

Is there a minimum you have to do for your sanity, or a quota to be able to compete in a race? No. There is always a run to be had, but always far more things to do. There in lies the conundrum.

Maybe being a runner is knowing running is just one of your ‘things’.

I find being a Dad and husband more important, and the attached responsibilities are tough to manage with full-time employment and part-time study. Throw in a social life and your time disappears.

So for me running is seflish. But it is a necessary evil as it keeps me healthy and sane. Maybe going for a 6k run after work is not too  bad, but 3hrs on a sunday is. Maybe I’m just an ordinary human in drifit shorts. Maybe I’m some sort of over-acheiver who does well at everything. At times I can beleive either. I guess I’ll let my wife and child decide. Meanwhile I’ll keep running.

Possibly one of the best things in a runner’s life is new shoes.

You build the anticipation as your old shoes clock up the k’s and you notice those little signs of replacement - the hardness, the faded upper, the worn soles. The excitement builds. You have justified a new pair. The financial outlay has been earned by months of training, with a tired, dilapidated pair of sneakers to show for it.

You have done the research, read the magazines, and possibly even done sneaky trys on with new pairs in the aisles at rebel. You’re not cheating on your old pair, your moving on, it was an inevitable and amicable split with your runners to retire to gym use and garage-based duties. But now you have that shiny new pair in your sights.

You look at it on the websites, show your significant other how it now has asymetrical lacing, hoping for a response of ‘God! That is not possible! Wait - let me see that - this is the greatest thing since the fork! Go buy 4 pairs now!’. Of course you don’t get that response but you look at testers responses on a littany of running forums and pages. Reassuring yourself that you are buying the best thing ever put on feet.

Then payday comes. Cash is available for the purchase. You try the left one on, and just like you hoped, it fits perfectly. Oh shoesalesman I am your cinderella. You try the other on. That’s perfect too. You stand up, feel your weight pour into the shoes perfectly, and you prance about the store to ‘test’ them out. Stores realise we like doing this ritual and have incorporated treadmills and cameras, and other such technological gimmickry to win us over. But our hearts - and soles (pun intended) - were won over long before we stepped in the store, for we are runners.

The sadness of taking them off and putting them in the box again is on ly offset by the joy of leaving the store with that big box of size 13s under your arm. The pride of walking back to your car with a large purchase. Then the moment of triumph, walking in the front door, showing your adoring family your shiny new purchase. Explaining the concepts of a biomorphic fit to a 1 year-old as she chews on the box. And then you do the greatest thing ever, you take that new shoe out of the box for the first time since you bought it. Hold it lovingly in your hands like a new baby, glancing at it from all angles, and then put your nose right in and take a big whiff of the new shoe smell. The euphoria rushes over you, sending you to some sort of footwear sensory nirvana. They should bottle this smell and sell it as perfume and cologne to attract other runners.

Of course, you put the shoes (with the new socks you bought with them) straight on - to break them in. Wearing them with pride as you vacuum, feed the cats, any excuse to walk about will do. We need milk? Bang - I’m off to the milk bar.

Then comes the first run. You are supposed to break these shoes in with gentle small efforts and walking. I’m more like a teenage couple - I can only hold myself back so long before I have burst out and go for it. You strap in for your long run, and take off as every step feels like you are walking on springboards, bouncing effortlessly down the road. Life is a dream. You avoid puddles, mud, conspicuous dust, nothing will stop your new shoes. This is what running is. You don’t care that you look like a bloke in new shoes and fancy gear, because you are moving, and you feel so good.

Then you get back home, probably with a blister or two as you adjust from your old pair, but you have a good time on your watch and smile on your face, and a shiny pair of shoes - waiting to do it all over again.

At this point I would like to pay tribute to the old runners. They have clocked up hundreds of k’s. Ran pb’s. Ran in the heat, rain, cold, light, dark. Then have seen some crazy things. They shared good times and bad, they will be put in the laundry cupboard but not forgotten.

God bless shoes.

I like food.

Not necessarily crap food all the time, but lots of good food. I like taste, and where there is a nice cheese or sumptuous cake or a well-crafted beer present, I’ll consume it without thought to caloric implications or thoughts of moderation.

Herein lies the problem.

At about 100kg, I’m a large unit. It looks okay spread over a 193cm frame, but it is still alot of flesh to move when placed in a running and racing context. I have scales and bodyfat measurers and these all tell me what I know - I’d be quicker if I lost 6-8 kg.

But food is good. I’m not one of these, ‘food for fuel’ types. I won’t down pounds of tuna to build protein, or raw fruit and vegetables like I know I should. I’ll eat what tastes good with a mind to it not being too bad. I’ll eat takey away noodles over greasy fish n’ chips, but still they aren’t that good in that sauce. I’ll have nuts to snack on instead of a tube of pringles, but I’ll have have a bag of them. You see the pattern here? I’m not doing the stupid thing but not the good thing either.

One might call this moderation. One might also call that one a blithering idiot.

I like to think that I exercise to keep my weight under control. It is a shit premise, but it works. But if I need to lose weight I need to modify this situation. I actually have to change my eating. This aspect has hovered over me for a long time and my prosciutto receptors do not like this.

So where does this leave me? In some guilty pergatory that is populated by low fat ice cream and light cheese. It is a place where I will never really progress to dietary heaven of some ideallyic dietary pyramid, but know better than to drop to the KFC tower burger-upsized hell that lurks beneath.

Bugger it. I’ll just run some more and see what happens.

Time trials scare me.

I find running 1km mentally tougher than 21.1km. I have a 3km time trial to do and am dreading it. I don’t know why, I’ve done some good work, but I still fear it.

It loiters about on my training schedule like a bully in a school corridor. You don’t make contact, but the fear of pain, loss and associated failure as a person is palpable. Maybe beating one time trial, the equvalent of standing up to a bully, would break this cycle of fear. As most would testify, standing up to a bully just results in further pain.

It is only mentally they beat me. I get a little down in the early stages and know there is no time to catch up. I’m beaten, even though my legs and lungs still have plenty left. I’ll just pull out of this lap. It’s too easy to stop. Too easy to take the easy option. Easy to just clock it as 600m of a training run, and look at it as quick in that regard.

I’m a plodder, I win in the long run. The short race isn’t me. But I need to do it to make the long run better - therein lies the catch 22. Do I stand up to the bully and cop a whacking to save my schooling, or remain in fear and in the shadows avoiding what might be knowing that we’ll go our separate ways?

I know what I need to do - I just am to scared to do it.

I just ran 4.7 km - in 27min.

For those who came in late, this is phenomenally slow for me.

Last week almost killed me. Three runs in over 35deg heat. A speed session, a hilly run home, and one back to work the next morning in steamy conditions. Sunday’s long run was reduced to 12km of waddling pain. I picked up from that point tonight.

I’ve been at this program for 4 weeks.

Where is the speed?

Where is the endurance?

My legs are like bags of wet cement, my heels are nailed to the ground and every step is and effort to remove them. There is nothing redeeming here. Usually it ‘oh, I’m slow - but I can do slow for 2 hours’ or ‘I can run quick - but only for a bit’. I’m 0 - 2.

This sucks.

I’ll keep plodding away, but something better improve soon.

I hate speedwork.

Running laps of a short track, or oval in my case, is pretty boring. Laps of the tan or princes park - are nice, but they are both 3 and-a-bit kms and very scenic as opposed to the barren ovals and tracks I frequent. Short speedwork stuff, as necessary as it is, is not my cup of tea.

I don’t race the short, quick races like 1000m, 3000m or even 5000m. I can’t see the point. Why get all worked up and trained up for something that will be over so fast? (This is a family blog so I’ll avoid the obvious lewd double-entredres).

I like value for my money. If I have to plonk $20-$30 for a race, get up at the crack of dawn and go through everything including travel, I want to at least be out there for a while. (Maybe that is a nice way of justifying a slow time - ‘I was just trying to get my money’s worth out of the event’).

But like my training I come round back to the original point again. I don’t like running laps. I really don’t have the mental fortitude to do it. I’ll get out of it too easy because each 400m there is an opportunity to head home. And if you are working in an area that is your weakest, well you are inclined to take the soft option.

If you didn’t notice the benefits in other areas it ouldn’t be worth it. But you do. Hang on, all these circular arguements are killing me. I’m heading off.