Week 35

Just counted back - this is the start of week 35 of my training!

It's true, I'm still beating myself up about my wasted long run last Sunday. I do a lot of telling people not to worry when they have bad days and bad runs, as through meeting people through Save the Rhino, through Facebook, Twitter, this blog and at Silverstone, I am gradually meeting more and more people in similar situations to me. But as with all things, it's much easier to dish out advice than to take it.

This blog entry is for yesterday's run. Not enough time for anything very long, I did thirty minutes on the treadmill running on the full incline. As usual, in the conservatory and uphill, though short, it is some workout.

Another problem, looking back on recent runs, is sometimes I run without a target. Look at last week - a week of interval training where I just picked a few songs to run to and ran when I was ready to stop, a run on the streets where I allowed myself to decide en route whether to do 3.5 or 7 miles, or anything in between, and then in my long run I was just too aware of all the options for cutting back to Bicester and making my 16 mile run pretty much any shorter distance I wanted.

Though these options will always be there, I need to stop giving myself these options to bail out except in an emergency. I need to push myself harder and be mentally stronger to get the marathon distance completed in one month's time.

Also yesterday I visited the Save the Rhino headquarters in London for the third time. The harsh reality of two separate situations hit me - the pitifully low numbers of all five separate rhino species, and the lofistics and reality of Marathon day next month. I am genuinely terrified - and for the first real time in this blog need to grovel for sponsorship help to get me towards my target (http://www.justgiving.com/neilrichards1), as my fundraising seems to be on a similar lull to my running ...