Week 38: 14 – 20 September

Run: 0h 00m (0.0 miles) | Cross Train: 0h 34m | Gym: 0h 00m

There are weeks when the training plan dictates what happens, and there are weeks when your body makes the decision for you. This was very definitely one of the latter.

I came into Monday with sore quads from the Great North Run and was quite happy to take a complete rest day, other than walking the dog. After that, though, what should have been a straightforward few days of post-race recovery turned into something rather different.

By Tuesday a bad throat and cough were properly established, which meant another day without training. Then on Wednesday morning I fainted in the shower. I have a recognised vasovagal sensitivity, so the episode itself wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory; tiredness, stress and a viral infection just seemed to provide the perfect combination. It did, however, make the decision about whether I should train that day remarkably straightforward.

The only recorded training of the week was my first swimming lesson back after the summer on Friday. Even that wasn’t particularly convincing. We’re trying to move my breathing from every two strokes to every three, which means breathing to both sides, and I was struggling for breath on the left. It was difficult to know how much was technique and how much was simply the lingering virus. Either way, 725 metres was enough.

The difficult part of a week like this isn’t really missing the running. It’s watching the calendar move on while doing it.

Chester Marathon is now only three weeks away and I haven’t run since the Great North Run. I’ve spent months building towards a sub-three-hour marathon, so inevitably there’s a temptation to start calculating how much fitness I’m losing and how quickly I can get back into the Hansons Marathon programme.

I’m trying not to do that.

Amsterdam Marathon is a week after Chester and has suddenly become a possible alternative. There appear to be resale places available and, rather conveniently, my daughter will be in Amsterdam that weekend playing hockey. An extra week sounds attractive after losing this one, although it may prove fairly meaningless: if the virus takes long enough to clear that I’m no longer in shape to have a proper crack at sub-three, seven extra days aren’t magically going to fix it.

So for now there isn’t a decision to make. The priority is simply getting well enough to run again.

It’s frustrating, but perhaps there’s something useful in weeks like this too. Serious training encourages you to believe that progress comes from continually doing more. Occasionally the more difficult discipline is accepting that doing absolutely nothing is the thing most likely to get you where you want to go.