A Tale of Twenty Miles

After a very misty but very awesome autumn trail run this afternoon, I’m spending my evening tabbing between the Met Office website and Google Maps in an attempt to decide where to head for my long run this weekend.

My training schedule calls for another 20 miler; the last one before the actual marathon. (Hang on, did anyone else just hear Beethoven’s Fifth ringing in the air?). I could just re-visit the trails, which will no doubt make the run a lot more interesting, not to mention more challenging. As it is, I’m contemplating an excursion to the Hermitage in Dunkeld:

On the other hand, it would probably be wiser to just hit the local roads – I do most of my running on trails and my legs could probably do with the pounding on concrete before the actual marathon. Besides, it’s not as though the roads around where I live are bad either:

But while I’m trying to decide where to run, I’m actually finding myself feeling a little apprehensive about this particular run before I’ve even laced up my trainers. I usually love my long runs, so I’m not exactly sure what has brought about this emotional dragging of feet.

Could it be the fact that the met office is promising a type of weather for the weekend which lends itself to little other than curling up in front of the fire with a hot coco? While I’m not exactly a fair weather runner, spending the better part of three hours running around in freezing, horizontal rain will no doubt complicate my strategy for coping with winter (which currently involves simply and stubbornly denying its existence).

I might also just be getting a little twitchy because this long run will be my last run before I cross the all-important boundary into taper territory. If you must know, I taper about as well as a lumberjack would dance the Swan Lake.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I just can’t shake off the feeling that this last long run will have a disproportionately hefty impact on how I’ll feel during the actual race. Sure, I’ve run 20 milers before and have even felt good doing so, but it somehow seems that all good training would be eclipsed by a lousy, final long run with no further chance to redeem myself before the big race. This may not sound very rational, but since when do hearts obey any rules of logic?

I think the best way to handle these feelings will be to drown them in copious amounts of hot coco (hey, the Met Office practically prescribes it!), which I shall see to tomorrow. Once I have selected the scenery for my long run, I shall approach it with my usual curiosity and forward moving strategy (no pun intended). In any case, I think that there is a high probability that I’ll have heaps of fun once I get going, as running in punitive conditions tends to expose a perverse part of my personality which actually revels in the ordeal.

But if, on the other hand, the whole run ends up assuming the shape of a pear, there’ll always be more hot coco when I get back.