What I think about when I think about running on the treadmill

My Singapore readers (yes, all three of you) may know that Singapore has recently been through its worst period of haze ever recorded.
I won't really talk about it except to say that we've been working anywhere from 11 to 15 hours a day covering this. And that marathon training while working wackaloon hours is somewhat difficult.

As you may have guessed I'm doing my marathon training Hansons-style, which is intended to simulate the fatigue you feel at the end of a marathon. You rack up lots of slow miles over the course of the whole week. Because of my flaky schedule I've had to adapt the standard plan, but am still running six days a week. Even better? I'm already tired. All the time.

Last Sunday I had a 24km long run planned. It started really well: on Saturday night I worked till 1am (when does that ever go well?), went home, slept 4.5 hours and went to the gym (it was both hot and hazy outside) to bang out my 24km at speeds between 8.6 and 9.2 km per hour. I was armed with a phone, some ebooks loaded on said phone, water, energy chews, a gel, Nuun, and a sport towel.

According to the gibberish I posted on Facebook and sent to friends during the run, this is what I think about when I think about running on the treadmill.
- 4km into a 24km run on the treadmill at the office gym. Entertain me or come say hi. (No one did, except virtually.)
- Mr (not-so) Genetically Challenged (obviously I married him for the genetic boost he will one day give our future children): "Hi beautiful. You're insane." Me: "And you married me! *beams* "
- My mouth has no idea what to do with energy chews. Spent the last 2 km with Clif Shot Blok stuck in my teeth. (Mm, caries.)
- Conversation with Holly about pregnant women wearing N95 masks: "A meta-analysis I read said there wasn't really any good evidence for pregnant women not to wear the masks because of increased respiratory burden." (Yes, I typed this out on a phone touchscreen while running.)
- Hooray, 8km down.
- Hooray, 12km down.
- That's a funny-looking sunbird in the plants outside the gym. It's not a common olive-backed one. (It turned out to be a very pretty brown-throated sunbird.)
- Only 8km left! I can do this. I eat 8km for breakfast. (Then I thought about breakfast.)
- Hooray, I've just done a half marathon in less time than it took to do my first ever half marathon.
- You'll feel this tired at 35km in Perth and you'll still have to run. So run.
- Why is it that Australia is full of things that will gladly kill you, while New Zealand has not a single one, even though they used to be the same continent? (The answer probably has something to do with them evolving after the continent split apart.)
- I wonder what Tyler Cowen thinks of Singapore's food landscape. (I was reading 'An Economist Gets Lunch' on my phone at the time - a very bad book to read if you happen to be hungry. I was hungry. I did not find out what Prof Cowen thinks of Singapore's food scene until about chapter 11 while on the same treadmill today.)
- Hooray, I'm done. (I am so done.)

I leave you with blurry treadmill photographic evidence.

I've been forgetting to post the weekly workout log and also forgetting to post in general, but since nobody reads it but me and I already have a notebook full of workout notes, my total for the week of June 17 to 23 was 57km of a planned 62. Either I have to get a lot faster or there need to be more hours in a day in order for me to fit everything in.

DON'T PANIC

What, I haven't posted in nearly a month? How did that happen, yadda yadda yadda.

I know exactly how that happened. Back in early May there was some sad news at home - my grandfather passed away (he was 96. We miss him. But don't feel too bad. Not everyone gets 96 good years and four great-grand-children close by). So we were dealing with all that. Then my parents whisked my grandma off to a nice restful holiday in Bintan, and the following week my husband and I went off to New Zealand. On which more in a future post. I promise. I remembered to take photos this time.

Throughout all of this, I ran. And ran and ran. We did a four-day hike in New Zealand, where it's now closing in on winter. On the North Island where my grand-aunt lives I had a lovely run. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, I felt like I was flying, and when I looked up I'd run for an hour and a half.

It's now week 5 of 18 of my Perth marathon training. I tend to panic all the way till the last three weeks of each marathon cycle and then finally sit back, relax and let my legs do their thing. Obviously this hasn't been very effective if you judge by my previous marathon times. Which are complete rubbish. (6:18 in 2009 in Singapore. 5:15 in 2011 in Tokyo. 5:20 here last year).

Today I had a minor freak-out on poor Holly, convinced that I will never be able to run a sub-5-hour marathon, that it's not just the heat giving me issues, that despite all the training I just don't have it in me. And that I'm afraid to go all the way to Perth and find that out.

Fortunately tonight's track session was downright magical and subdued the panic a little bit. 5 x 5 minutes at 5K race pace - so just under 1km per rep. I discovered that yakking away to a friend (well, a short sentence at a time) at the start of each rep helps stop me from going out tooooo fast and imploding like I normally do. Even if she isn't really responding to me. Tonight the laps were on target - and I felt like I was flying.

The panic is still there. But at least I know where my towel is.

Head games, or, the wasted energy of envy

Yesterday I did the first speedwork of the year, 5x800 (4:22, 4:20, 4:18, 4:09, 4:13). Not great, but ok splits for someone trying to recover from a very mild cold - a cold so mild that I never got sick enough to skip work or other commitments. I was just very, very tired and slightly sniffly and had the lingering feeling that my head was stuffed full of jello. Christmas bug, you win...

How to get over a cold - day 1: (have someone else) make fresh tomato sauce for pasta.
Day 2 - Turn leftover sauce into gazpacho with the addition of salt, water, tomato paste, vinegar, hot sauce, great glugs of olive oil and two punchy cloves of garlic. (Do not consume immediately prior to interview, meeting or generally any human interaction.)
Day 3 - Go to the track for speedwork. Do 800s until less fatigued.
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"Stop wasting energy on letting 'talentless' be a stumbling block!" - sage advice from my runnerd friend Desiree, when I complained I was struggling with being talentless and...you know... genetically challenged.

This is much harder to write. In this age of facebook and twitter and dailymile and athlinks, it's so easy to compare myself with other people. Other people who have been running, not even semi-seriously, for half as long as I have, and who are so talented they are able to waltz in and run my times with half the work. (And are genuinely nice people. And hot. And have the supernatural ability to not be a dishevelled, soggy mess after a workout - I am not one of those girls.)

I've had this struggle as long as I do...pretty much anything I love. There will always be more talented writers, more talented runners, more talented dancers. At least running is objective - a time is a time is a time. In the arts, the choreographer or dance instructor can have favourites, the publisher and prize committee can pick and choose.

It doesn't help to console myself with the knowledge that I work *hard* for everything I have - because the people with more talent work just as hard and shine brighter.

I must add: it's impossible to be miserable while running solo. I might be more or less tired than usual, but never miserable. It's when I run with other people that the trouble starts: other people motivate me, but I'm miserable when everyone else disappears into the distance (ahem, upcoming Green Corridor Run) and I am dead last.

I know comparing is a waste of energy, that I should buckle down and work even harder and keep breaking my PRs. But it's hard not to compare.

How do you stop yourself from envy?