Winter running part 3

The other thing about winter running is the wind.  Not the lovely gentle breezes that cool the skin off when one is feeling a trifle overheated but the great big slamming wind that we have been suffering from over the past few days.

Just lately I have been feeling like I am running on one lung or half a lung even.  And even though I was a smoker for many years (and probably deserve to have a collapsed lung at some point) I realised that I only have trouble on certain days.  Very windy ones.

So if I'm not suffering from monolungitis it must be the weather that is quite literally taking the wind out of my sails.

Apart from the vagaries of the weather I'm finding it increasingly difficult to juggle the training and working.  In fact I have had to choose between writing about the training on this blog or actually doing it.  I was feeling particularly overwhelmed last week, the tiredness was killing me, my limbs were aching and again I was wondering why I had taken on a marathon in the first place.   At the gym I bumped into an old work colleague who told me that the marathon itself is easy compared to the training.  Hm.  I took that little nugget away with me and thought on it for a while.

The point is that I know that it is all in the training.   This is what scuppers me over and over again in life as well as in running.  Forgetting to live in the moment and looking at the end result - "when this is all over I will ... (fill in the space as you see fit)".  And over and again I get to the end result and realise that it isn't all in the goal - it is the getting there that counts.

So, I am consciously working on changing my attitude to training, the marathon, life, the universe and everything.  I am really trying to be "in the moment", attempting to remember why I am doing this.  And, above all, I am striving to enjoy - savour even - every moment of every run and training session.

It is certainly true that some days are harder than others but, standing at the top of Alexandra Palace and looking across a rain and wind-swept London from possibly the most exposed part of my (long) run on Monday morning - soaked to the skin, desperately trying to find shelter from the driving rain - I realised that it is moments like these that I will look back on and cherish.   And it is at moments like this that I feel most alive.  And this is why I do it.