Somewhere not Palmers Green

There's something to be said for taking a mid-training break somewhere sunny, overseas and near a beach. And that something is "Oh bloody hell, where am I going to be able to run which doesn't involve toiling up a gravity-defying clifftop incline, plodding over strength-sapping sand dunes for miles, or ending up on the barbed-wire strewn building site of a would-be holiday resort apparently abandoned some time in the mid-1980s?"
I'm not a huge fan of trying out experimental new courses for my runs. For me, familiarity breeds content, not contempt. I like to know where I'm going and what horrors lie ahead of me. And while going running while on holiday always seems like a good idea in theory, in practice it usually means getting up at about 6.00 in the morning so you can be finished while the temperature is still in the "stiflingly uncomfortable" range and before it hits the "actually might pass out" level.

Not Palmers Green on a wet Wednesday

This is a long-winded way of saying I spent the last week on Gran Canaria, off the coast of Africa. There are worse places to run, it's true. The broad, flat beach promenades are lovely - and would have been perfect if they could have just joined up without the steep hills in between. And some of the views from the coastal paths were simply stunning - you don't get panoramas like this (see right) when you're plodding round Palmers Green on a wet Wednesday afternoon, I can tell you.
What Palmers Green does have, however, are pavements for running on. Everywhere. No roads where I'm forced to run in the frighteningly narrow gap between the crash barrier and the Canarian car drivers whose haughty disdain for the speed limit would gladden the heart of many a former Top Gear presenter. Or roads where the pedestrian space is effectively a dirt track sporadically riddled with rocks the size of small meteorites. So if my 15-mile long run was about a minute-a-mile slower than it ought to have been (and sadly, it was), I'm blaming the conditions.

Also not Palmers Green

I arrived home from the Canaries to find an email from the charity I'm running for, the MND Association. They contact me every Friday with helpful tips and advice, and rather less helpful recommendations of how far I should have got with my training by this stage. It's very kind of them, though I could probably do without them entitling their emails with the  foreboding "X WEEKS TO GO!" (where x < any number which would represent the lowest amount of weeks in which I might feel ready to run a marathon). Chaps, I know it's only six weeks to go. Reminding me isn't helping.

I'm also getting handy tips from the lovely people at Virgin Money (the backers of the London Marathon), one of which actually made me laugh out loud. This is one of their top ten motivational tips. 

Don't take the "all or nothing" approach, they advise.If you’re short on time, they say, (err, yup) or really not feeling up to a long session (it's like they're reading my mind), just go for a shorter run for however long you feel you can spare (I'm extremely cool with this so far). And then they quote "legendary running author Dr George Sheehan" (nope, never heard of him either, but apparently he was huge in the recreational running world in his day) to ask the apparently rhetorical question “Have you ever felt worse after a run?”

Hahahahahaha. Umm. Guys? Not sure how to break this to you. But yes. Frequently. Usually in a region running anywhere north of my ankles and south of my hips, with particular poignancy in areas such as my lower calves, upper right hamstring and the whole of my groin. 

Don't get me wrong, running has its moments. But right after a gruelling training session when you've expended every last ounce of stamina and effort you have, and your legs are moving with all the gymnastic joie de vivre of an arthritic sloth, is not one of them.

On that note, it's time for my 16-mile long run of the week. I can literally hear the "FIVE WEEKS TO GO" email being prepared, ready to flutter into my inbox on Friday. Can't wait.