I've been running on and off (mostly on) for around six and a half years now - where the time goes, I cannot say. Since the first time I laced up my trainers, I've had plenty of good runs and more than a few sessions that were less than fun. I'm thinking about the time I ran thirteen long, tedious miles in constant drizzling rain, or the time(s) I forced myself to go out even though it was near-freezing, or the times my body couldn't get into the groove.
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| They can't all be good... |
But even with all those under my belt, I can confidently say that my worst run ever was the November 2023 Castle Coombe Chilly 10k, as I touched on briefly before. It wasn't the coldest. It wasn't the wettest. It was nowhere near the longest. But it was the run I will always look back on as the single hardest and most frustrating.
What was it that made the run so damned difficult? In a nutshell, it was entirely mental. Nothing more, nothing less. I allowed the day to get inside my head. No, I couldn't honestly say why. Maybe it was because I'd taken time off after the Chippenham Half Marathon (perhaps too much time?) and struggled to get my head back in the game. I had only gone for a few runs between the two events, and most of these had been brief jaunts on the treadmill. At the time, I believed that I was doing well; I set the machine for an hour run and gave it my all. Indeed, I was delighted to watch the distance climb higher and higher, and when it reached that magical six with plenty of time to spare, I was elated. A 10k run is roughly six miles and I firmly believed that I was not only ready for the race, but that I was in better shape than ever before.
Oh how wrong I was.
It wasn't until a week or so after the Chilly 10k that I learned the sad truth about gym treadmills. It turns out that they are all set to record distance in kilometres, not miles. So when I believed that I'd smashed the six mile target in less than one hour, in reality, I was still around 3k short. This definitely became a huge factor on the day.
It also didn't help that this was my third time taking part in the Chilly 10k. The excitement of running on a real race track was long over by this point. It was also my third time running with my brother and I fully understood that he was so much fitter than me. The awful weather only caused my mood to slip and get worse as the kilometres fell behind us. The more I struggled, the more I started to doubt myself and the harder it became to keep going. Of all the runs I've completed, this was the worst, by some considerable distance.
At the time of writing, it's been almost a full year since I endured that particular run and it still plays on my mind. I still think about it when I'm lacing up my trainers or looking out the window to check the weather. It haunts me like a specter. Any time I'm struggling to find the motivation or looking for a reason not to go out there and train, this run returns to my mind and fills me with poison. Remember how much it sucked? Remember how you hated every minute of it? Remember how you couldn't keep up with your brother for the last sprint and looked so out of it at the finish line?
It's far too easy to let that voice win. So while I do recall how awful that run was and how bad I felt at the time, I also remember the other points, the more important facts. It was cold but I wasn't shivering. I was slow but I didn't stop. I ached but I kept going. And, most important, I remember this:
I still finished it.
Yes, we all have bad runs. Yes, sometimes they can act like mental roadblocks. But the key thing is to always push through and focus on the good side. I had a bad run and I finished it. The others will always be so much better.
