Bugger

Well, that run was rubbish. In fact, it wasn’t even a run. For some reason, when I got to the top of Bridge Valley Road, I lost all motivation. It seemed partly physical, partly mental — I just gave up, really. I tried to push on and run again after I’d walked for a bit to get my breath, but it didn’t really happen. In the end, I alternated jogging and walking, and cut today’s route short at just over 5K.

I really don’t know why this should be. Sometimes, I’ve heard, you just have bad days — but this is really the first terrible day I’ve had, where I’ve actually given up and started walking. Looking back in the archives, even on a horrible day last year, I managed to keep jogging.

I found a couple of articles that talk about bad running days — one from HubPages, and one from Running Times. They cite possibilities including sleep, food, illness, hydration, shoes, mental health and the weather. And some of these are quite possible. I woke up with a bit of a headache this morning, feeling like I’d not slept that well. Plus my food intake’s probably been a bit excessive, and included a few more of the wrong things, since I went holiday. And who knows? Maybe I’m just coming down with something, or at least fighting it off — everybody around me seems to have a cold or flu at the moment.

So. Not much I can do about it, really, other than trying to live a little bit better over the next few days, perhaps cutting down on the caffeine a bit (another habit that’s crept back since the holiday), getting to bed early, and trying to wrestle my food intake back towards smaller, more healthy options. And hope my mid-week run goes okay this week. I’ll probably try Wednesday, but it’ll depend on the weather…