Week Two: Finding a dead body and overcoming challenges

I thought I had found a case for Morse and his sidekick Lewis

After the euphoria of the first week of training, the nagging self-doubt in my brain expected a crash - a yang to my ying, a cloud to my silver lining.

Day one on Sunday felt anything but a good start as my 6.45 alarm pierced a hangover. We’d been at our friends’ house the night before and all of my pre-event promises of ‘I’m in training’ melted away and by midnight I was well-oiled. Not ‘lashed’ you understand but beyond what is sensible for what lay ahead.

But I dragged myself out of bed, switched on the head torch and lumbered out. The mild nausea and general shabby feeling was quickly forgotten as 2km in I spotted a body in a ditch.

Having been a news journalist for 15 years and an aficionado of Inpsector Morse it felt like a moment I had been expecting for a long time and I had to take long, deep breaths to summon the steel I needed to walk over.

My heart was beating so fast I felt dizzy as I rolled the corpse over. The shock of seeing the head loll to one side was a fierce but short-lived flame as I realised it was a scarecrow. We had very high winds the day before and it must have been blown from the field nearby.

No-one saw me make a huge fool of myself but it perked me up a treat and I resumed the run at a much higher pace. It was another lovely long run mixing roads with some trail running around Boars Hill - one of the few high spots in the disappointingly flat county of Oxfordshire.

After an hour my pace slowed and I realised that this was going to be a long, steady run as a night of beer and wine and too-little sleep does not make ideal prep. Still, I enjoyed it and started the week with a solid 20km under my belt.

My plan had been to run home from work on the Monday. But as I sat at my desk and looked at the pouring rain and strong winds I thought again. I was sure that I could make up the mileage on another day.

But then the realisation hit me that this was what I always told myself. I always give myself an ‘out’ - an excuse not to run, not to hit the peaks of training that you need to scale if you are to reach your potential. I remembered the words of champion ultrarunner Scott Jurek in his book Eat and Run: “Sometimes you just do things”, and it was enough; on went the headtorch and off I set.

It’s 13.9km to run home from work and I enjoyed most of it. My resilience as a runner is increasing every week and I recover more quickly than ever before but the last three km were tough. High winds, cold rain and stiff calves made it tough going but meant that I felt all the more smug when I got home.

I stiffened up a treat that night but, with my bike stuck at work, had no choice but to run back to work in the morning (which had always been my plan anyway). I backed off the pace and made it a very enjoyable and easy run.

I wanted to put in an interval session at the lunchtime but my mind was completely split. Am I risking injury? Am I doing too much too soon? But my thoughts went back to Jurek and I headed to the gym for my second run of the day.

I don’t always love treadmills but when its cold and raining, just slinging on some headphones and smashing out some high pace can be satisfying. I kept it short and sweet and only ran 4km but still managed four, one-minute intervals of very high pace. I made sure I did 20 minutes stretching and, safe in the knowledge that Wednesday was a rest day, was pleased that just three days into the week I had amassed nearly 38 km including a long run and an interval session.

I had a training course on the Thursday so couldn’t sneak off at lunchtime and I had a squash in the evening so couldn’t run when I got home so didn’t want to run in to work on the Friday morning. But, buoyed by the news that I will be running alongside Paula Radcliffe in the London Marathon, I decided to run home, play squash in the evening and then drive to work in the morning.

I was so badly beaten by my 64-year-old opponent in the squash match that needn’t have worried too much - I barely broke a sweat. My legs felt a bit heavy but I was beaten on skills (ie I have none vs he has lots) so the training could not be blamed.

Driving in on the Friday was a novelty ( I usually cycle every day) but I was pleased that I had managed to find a solution. I went eyeballs-out (runners’ speak for maximum effort) on the treadmill at lunchtime and finished the week on a real high.

I ran a total of 45.8miles (73.7km) this week which makes me feel like I might be becoming a ‘proper runner’. But even more satisfying was the way my training plan was challenged but I found a solution.

Taking the easy way out has been a bit of a recurrent theme in my life. Maybe it’s time for a change.