Agoraphobia II - the sequel

Saturday afternoon and I've been feeling good that I can make it up to one hour, but want to start running properly on the streets. After all the marathon isn't on a treadmill unfortunately.

It occurred to me that my efforts so far, in Oxford in a Santa suit and in Bicester on a freezing morning, have been pretty pathetic, so although I have a 3.5 mile route lined up, I decided to go to mapmyrun.com again and figured out a shorter 2.25 mile circular loop. If I can nail this, then I should feel better about myself than abandoning a longer trip.

The fact remains that I'm still not comfortable running outside - once I stepped outside I felt genuinely nervous, so much so that after striding confidently to the end of my road, I turned right, started running, and eventually realised I'd gone completely the wrong way. Just a false start but not a good sign.

It's just harder running on the road. The legs felt heavy from the start, but I had in mind where I knew the first mile marker was. At this point I checked my watch and was pleased that it had taken ten minutes so far. Unfortunately then I just decided to slow down and walk for a bit. It was feeling tough but I don't really know why I did stop and not try and run through it.

On a treadmill I have a mission, to run for a set number of minutes. If I don't, then I fall off. On the street, my mission is to run from A to B. Problem is, if I don't, then I walk, but still get there!

Eventually I did run a little more but the impetus had gone, and I was beating myself up mentally. There seemed no real need to run any of the remainder, since I'd already failed the task, so each time I tried to run again I felt tired or got stitch, and ended up walking again.

I've blogged before that I actually don't enjoy running that much yet. I am really enjoying the fact that I am fitter than ever, and am meeting so many challenges I have set myself. Conversely, if I fail then it just makes me miserable, and a very fed up 24 hours ensued. I chose a deliberatley short run so I could beat my demons and do a run from start to finish and didn't even manage half of it ...