I have a sure-fire way of knowing when I need to be cutting back (and/or taking better care of myself) – during an easy-paced run I will suddenly feel light-headed and my legs will turn to jelly. I had a couple of episodes like this last year and both followed spells over racing/training and thus preceded a spell of poor race performance and loss of motivation.I’ve been clear of this phenomenon since late last November, but suffered a recurrence this Tuesday. Unfortunately, this was the day before the MWL Race 2. This resulted in a below par 10k performance and a drop of 9 places from race 1. My consolation is, if 37:08 now represents my level of performance when out of sorts and not at all in the mood for a race, then that’s not too bad.
Really, my decline through May should not be that surprising when taking the following into account; a lack of quality sleep, stress at work, comfort-eating and a weight-gain of 7 pounds! Also, apart from not running for 6 days immediately after the marathon, I've not had a real training break since Xmas.
So, on to NHRR team matters. Both men and women enjoyed significantly improved performances over the first race, but unfortunately this left us a bit worse off! As in the first race, the men were 3rd and the ladies 4th (and both with much better individual placings). However, with the FVS ladies achieving 2nd place on the night, we actually dropped one place in the overall standings after race 2. It looks like it's going to be nip and tuck all the way with our local rivals.
