After last Sunday's successful long run, I was feeling quite positive about this morning's slightly longer run.
Not only didn't I have any sign of the cold that seemed to be starting just as I headed out last week (the run seemed to miraculously clear it) but this week I even managed to get my Camelbak working (I couldn't last week) and took it with me so that I could rehydrate on the go.
All things were looking good. After all I was only adding another mile and a half, and what's more I decided to mix in a minute's walk after every nine or ten minutes today too.
Who knows why it happened but I struggled big time again today. I even started out very very easily.
The only thing I can think of is that once I'd got the first couple of miles over, I just couldn't resist checking on both the time and the distance and calculating my average pace, and I kept doing that for the rest of my run.
Now I've been running for many years and I know that you shouldn't consider pace, unless it's to make sure that you're at least two minutes per mile slower than race pace on a long training run, so why oh why did I keep looking at my Garmin?
It may not have been anything to do with my pace, but I'm still amazed that I committed such a schoolboy error, and absolutely knew I was doing it even while I did it.
The only thing to do is to remove the temptation so it's not possible to do it, so next week, my longest run before the half marathon, I will run without my Garmin and just take an ordinary watch. It's a bit like putting all the sugary food in the dustbin at the start of a diet.
Is there a temptation you need to remove so that your inner saboteur can't stop you from achieving your goals?
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