Between a minor medical scare and a massive case of FOMO last weekend, i ended up missing my long run last week. More accurately, I raved all night and was unable to run the following day…

To make up for this, I threw in a 5k run every other day this week and planned to cap it off with a 24k run on the weekend.

What’s that saying about the best laid plans… Saturday rolls around and I’m far too exhausted to run and also starting to come down with yet another cold. New plan – rest Saturday, run Sunday. Problem solved.

Except it wasn’t because I then recall I’ve made plans with a close friend that I really don’t want to miss but I also can’t afford to miss another run.

And that is how I found myself heading to the local gym at 10.30pm in the evening looking to try and complete my run on the treadmill. It turns out that at that sort of time, the only people in the gym are generally the super fit/super dedicated athletes and the cleaners. Suffice to say, the athletes were unimpressed with my performance and the cleaners were unimpressed with me walking around the areas they were trying to clean… Nonetheless, I loaded my playlist and then set off….for three of the most boring hours of my life.

Treadmill running is dire at the best of times. Faced with the prospect of three solid hours of staring at the same wall, every minute became a test of patience and willpower.

The good news is that I was able to achieve a new PB for continuous running – 16km. The bad news is that at the 17th km I started to flag and even at a walk I found myself unable to continue and had to throw the towel in at just under 19km. Speaking to some more experienced friends, the consensus seems to be that I need to consider taking in some extra energy to get me through this stage – my focus for the next few weeks should be on figuring out the best way to achieve this or face ending the race with a big fat DNF….

Just what I needed – another challenge to overcome with just weeks to go… Fingers crossed (and please don’t hesitate to chip in with any solutions!)