Smacking The Panic

Monday: After the great panic and stress of yesterday, I was determined to use today's session to go around the Salford 5km Run route, as described by one of the organisers. It was a little cold today but annoyingly sunny. I had to go out without any headgear, having lost both of my hats, and this ruined my mood somewhat, as I feel naked running without a hat on now. I had a bottle of water with me but it proved hard to drink as I ran. Anyway, I perhaps ran too fast initially, I was still quite worked up over what the hell I was letting myself in for. I managed 15mins of running time, and the distance cannot be measured with 100% accuracy on fetch since not all park pathways are mapped out, but I calculated I covered approximately 2.16km. As I dreaded, the uphill was steep and plentiful, and I stopped on flatter ground after the uphill. I wanted to keep going, but I had strong sharp pains in my back, on the left side, which began around 13mins and I really struggled to make it to 15mins. For most of that run, I had been gasping and wheezing anyway. I have had a cough for a few days and a lot of catarrh in my chest, which made it harder to breathe properly. In the morning, I thought I had coughed it all out, I even vomited a small amount, and felt a lot better for it; but running and breathing in the cold air made me cough again, so obviously it wasn't over. Hence, hitting 15mins made me feel like death, but I managed to keep walking. There were lots of paths and I retraced my steps at one point but I managed to vaguely figure out the route for the Salford Run. My stopwatch informed me I did it in 44mins 12secs (including the 15mins I ran). My attempts to map out the route I took measured it as 4.5km, half a km short of the official race length. Having gone through the estimated route, I don't know what I expected to feel, but what I do feel is less panicked and more disappointed with my progress so far. There is a lot more work to do than I previously thought. I really need to do more uphill running, I can't keep cheating like I have been doing. Also, I should be running that race route as practice for the real thing, an opportunity I won't have for the Great Runs. I'm trying to approach this in a rational and practical fashion, otherwise I will fall apart from the sheer terror. The fetchie I emailed yesterday, emailed me again, encouraging me to stay strong and offering kind words of support. I felt awful about my email to her yesterday, full of incoherent and hysterical rambling; I just need to get a grip and a sense of perspective. Tomorrow is another running day, got to keep trying and got to accept there will be good days and other days when you just want to adopt the foetal position and scream hysterically. Hoping tomorrow is the former, obviously.