Last week was the Week of The Comeback. This is how it went.

Sunday

When I lived in England I had a personal trainer who told me that the hardest part of going to the gym is getting off the sofa. Likewise, the hardest part of running in the morning is getting out of bed. I set my alarm for 4:45 as usual and made a point to stick to robotic reactions— as soon as I heard the alarm bell I got to my feet without giving myself time to think. However, I soon discovered that in the past three weeks the sunrise has inched back enough that I can’t go out as early as I once did. I ended up waiting until nearly 5:30 to leave the house, when I finally saw a thread of daylight. That means I can start sleeping until 5:15, which is great.

The run itself went a bit better than I expected. The first day back is always easy, because you have motivation and initial novelty on your side. Add that to the tremendous amount of support I had from friends and readers, and there was no way I could fail. I ran 30 minutes. It was just about the slowest run in history; I only covered about 3 kilometres. Casual walkers overtook me on the sidewalk. But I did it, I ran the full 30 minutes.

Monday

I expected today to be challenging for lots of reasons. One, I ran on the beach, and sand presents tremendous difficulties compared to pavement; two, I’d been awake all night and my bed was calling loudly to me; three, yesterday was the first run I’d done in about three weeks and I thought I’d be pretty tired and sore. But surprise: today was pretty much effortless. I love running on the beach. At that time of the morning it’s only me and the Med, which is how I like it.

Tuesday

I woke up pre-dawn this morning to already sauna-esque weather. Within two minutes of starting my run I wanted to quit. Thought about how I might explain my quitting to Brogan; decided to keep running instead (lesser of two evils). Things got slightly easier in the last ten minutes, but I’m ready for that break day tomorrow.

Wednesday

Sleeping in today was heaven, but I still felt some weird Catholic-flashback guilt, like I could have run but chose to be lazy instead. The weather was a lot cooler this morning, so in that sense I wish I’d had yesterday off instead. Today is the first of August, which means September is only a month away, and September will bring more reasonable weather.

I’ve gotta eat low-carb today. No need to carbo-load if I’m not running. I’m still going to do my resistance work, though— crunches and push-ups.

Thursday

Really, really, really annoyed with myself. Last night I let one little phrase, “it’s okay, you can skip a day,” settle in my head and grow. By morning, it had filled my entire brain, and I barely even flinched when the alarm rang, I just switched it off and went right back to sleep.

So I have to run now, in the sun, in the heat. That’s the deal. I had the choice to run this morning and I didn’t do it.

Putting my shoes on now. Out the door in less than five.

Friday

I had to run 45 minutes today to make up for the fact that I could only run 15 yesterday because the heat was unbearable. That sucked, to say the least, but I need to get used to doing longer runs. I’m glad tomorrow is my off day.

I’m noticing I have exactly the same problem with my off days as I do about taking walking breaks in the middle of my runs— once I lose momentum, that’s it. I’m done. If I start walking, I never quite get back into running again. If I just keep running the whole time, no problem. It’s actually easier for me if I don’t take breaks. The same thing is happening with my off days. I had no problem getting out there Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; Wednesday I took my scheduled break day, and that’s where it all went wrong. Thursday was a disaster, I couldn’t get out of bed and then couldn’t finish my run once I finally did emerge from sleep. Friday was miserable and all I wanted to do was finish it and be done with running. Saturday was my other off day, and I haven’t gone out to run since. Tomorrow will be a week since my last run, though I have been doing my cross-training, which I think is mostly due to the fact that I never take a day off from that. The weather is getting better now, so I’m regrouping to start running again on Sunday.

I really think that despite all the professional wisdom saying that days off are essential, I’m going to have to reconfigure my training schedule to have a couple of easy days but no complete off days. Losing momentum like that ruins me. I was the sort of weirdo back in school that wanted to skip lunch break and just get my work finished and leave school an hour early instead. I really hate coming to a screeching halt in the middle of something. For me it makes no sense to stop working if my work isn’t finished yet, and if I am forced to stop then I get frustrated and throw all my toys out of the sandbox.

And anyway, back when I was running just as a regular fitness thing, I never took a day off, never, and I never had any injuries or problems because of it. Okay, sure, I was only running 20 minutes a day, but still. I never noticed any ill effects from not having an off day. Some days I did take it easier than others, though, so perhaps that’s what I’ll start doing again, because that system worked fine, and yet I tried to fix it for some reason.

I’m slightly concerned that other runners seem to enjoy running and I don‘t. I’ve been running for twenty years and I still hate every minute when I’m out there. So why do I run? Well, I do ask myself that a lot during traning sessions, but really I think the answer is that I run because it’s the enemy and I won’t let the enemy beat me. Will I progress out of that and learn to work with running instead of against it? I don’t know. Like I said, it’s been twenty years and it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe I’m just the sort of person who has to be a rage-against-the-marathon type, a Hank Rollins sort of aggressive athlete. We’ll see as things progress if I get better at the zen technique as my runs get longer and the marathon gets closer.

The first thing, though, is to rearrange my schedule so that I’m running at least a little bit every single day. That’ll be easier to manage as the weather gets cooler.