Just keep swimming

On Saturday, I had to do my next long run. I was aiming for fifteen miles this time. One good thing that's coming out of this training is a vast improvement in my mental arithmetic. My running watch does distance in miles, the treadmill only in kilometres. The running watch gives pace in miles per minute, the treadmill does kilometres per hour. And I'm not that good at maths, so working out how long it's going to take me to get where I'm going is good for several minutes of distraction on a run. I worked out that, having managed 13.1 miles in two and a half hours, I should be able to do fifteen miles in three hours.

I didn't feel like it. I didn't want to go. But I set off. And, to cut a very long story short, not only did I take almost three and a half hours, I only managed 14.8 miles. I had to walk some of the way (granted, my walking pace is actually faster than my slow running pace sometimes, but still, I had managed to keep a running motion going for the whole half marathon distance and was really disappointed). And when I got near home and was only 0.2 miles short, I simply could not keep going and fell short of the distance. This in spite of four jelly babies, including a black one.

And this is the trouble with doing something ambitious. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes it doesn't. The hard thing is not to let the failures overshadow the successes. Attempting this marathon was never going to be easy.

So what went wrong? I have been very tired. James has not been well and A (2) and E (1) have been taking it in turns to keep me up in the night - just as one settles, the other starts. The pavement ran out at 6.5 miles; I kept going anyway and found myself running the middle two miles on a thin, sloped, muddy verge next to a very busy road, culminating in a bridge over the A41 leading down towards the M25. And my trainers aren't waterproof.

But that's not it. I just never got to a place in that long run where I was running. It was effort, effort, effort all the way. When we're learning a new song in chorus, there's a time when you hold the music and look at it. Then you put the music down and concentrate really hard on remembering it, glancing at it now and then to make sure you're getting it right. Then you put the music away and give every ounce of energy to singing your line right, relying only on the learning you've done. And then, one day, when you've accepted that you just have to give it that level of energy all the time, it all falls into place. The song becomes yours, and even if you don't sing it for months, even years, the harmonies just come back whenever you need them.

In running terms, I'm still gripping that music. And sometimes it goes right, and sometimes it doesn't.

If this was horseriding, I'd have to get back on the horse. Instead, as the running isn't going brilliantly, I'll fall back on the mantra of the dizzy blue fish in Finding Nemo. Just keep swimming.

Except I'll be running, obviously.