Too hot for a half marathon PB.

Wednesday 23rd July
Body Pump. No cardio. The fact that I had no inclination to do anything else told me I was tired and obviously in need of a couple of days off.

Thursday 24th/Friday 25th July
Complete rest, full body massage with Ali on Friday evening.

Saturday 26th July
Body pump in the morning, missed out the squats track. Last session with Ali for a couple of weeks, as he goes on holiday this week.

Sunday 27th July
Gloucester Half Marathon. Went to the race feeling rested and confident that this would be the day I set myself a new half marathon PB. However I had failed to take into account two major factors; I knew it wasn't an easy course but was confident I am better at hills than I used to be. However I had no idea how much the weather would affect me.

I set off at a good pace, round about 8-minute miles for the first five. But after 3 miles I was already dripping with sweat and after 5 miles I was already feeling the heat and slowing down.

None of the hills on the course were particularly vicious, but there were enough of them to take it out of you. Which is probably why the race only scores 55% for PB potential on the runners' world website.

I can't remember exactly where it went wrong, but I do remember walking at the water stations at miles 7 and 10, and felt close to passing out. I abandoned all hope of a good time, deciding just to treat it as a training run and try to get round.

Get round I did, and despite everything finished in 1 hour 55 minutes. I decided later that was easily worth 1:45 on a flat course in good weather. If there was any doubt the next few days told me I couldn't have done a lot better on the day.

Monday 28th July
6 miles very steady, ran the Lethbridge route on my own. My legs were pretty sore today, so even if I did walk bits of the race, I must have run hard yesterday. Or is there something in Neil England's belief that training every day is better than tapering so you don't fool your body into thinking regular training has ceased?

Tuesday 29th July
Just couldn't motivate myself to go to the track tonight, my legs were still sore and I was exhausted after spending the day training on the new system and not getting enough sleep. Was meant to run with Steph but she had to cancel. Wasn't sure what to do so started jogging out to the lake, in the end did an interval session. However, I only did 3 laps instead of 5 or 6, and wasn't able to push myself as hard as I should. Still a good session though.

Wednesday 30th July
Body Pump and RPM. Steve was covering for Ali in pump, and while he is a very good RPM instructor, he is new to teaching pump and actually had to miss out shoulders and lunges as he doesn't know the choreography. Not his fault, he was obviously thrown in at the deep end. Did RPM afterwards as I didn't really feel like I'd had a workout but didn't want to run either. Will save that for running club tomorrow.