I’ve been slacking. I’ve been slacking on my training schedule and on Sunday, I felt it. It hurt.

According to my training schedule from my Coach, my Sunday long runs need to be between 15kms and 18kms. But I’ve only been running a maximum of 10kms on Sundays. In my head, I’ve been telling myself that 10kms is still pretty good. I mean, it’s Winter and I’m out there, running, way more than I typically run during Winter. I was doing good, right?

There are a couple of half marathon races coming up in August so I decided to do a proper long run on Sunday. The plan was 15kms. Off I trekked with the Randburg Harriers Sunday running group, route map in hand, fresh legs, big smile. It went well until we hit the 13kms mark. Then it started to hurt. Big time!

Regardless of the weekday track sessions and Thursday 8km time trials, I knew in my head that I had not run that far in ages. And I felt it. I dawned on me that I had not been following my training schedule properly and that even though 10kms was a great distance, it wasn’t helping my goals of running my 21km races any faster. I was so not prepared for the distance.

My legs felt tired for the rest of the day (such an awesome feeling though) and I could feel the run had been some good training on my whole body. But no more short runs. I need to get back into it and be more disciplined. Spring is coming! Thank goodness too because things are so much easier in the Summer. Especially running.