The marathon training took a bit of a backseat this week as I recovered from Covid-19. My weekend of cultural delights was most enjoyable, but all that socialising wrought inevitable consequences. I was initially prepared to put the physical and mental exhaustion I felt on Monday morning down to being old and unused to being out and about. A positive antigen test for my girlfriend on Monday evening, however, confirmed that Coronavirus was in the house.
It was a pretty substantial dose and, while I wasn’t exactly gutted to be housebound for the week, it has left me with an awful lot of ground to make up before the June Bank Holiday weekend. I had completed an eighteen-kilometre run in the week before being temporarily levelled, but the thought of running twice that distance with another five kilometres on top seems increasingly daunting. It was never going to be easy, but it’s starting to feel all the more difficult the closer we get to race time. I need to apply a bit more structure to my training for the next two months. The week after the marathon, my girlfriend and I are heading to Norwich with a group of friends and family to see Elton John on his seemingly never-ending farewell tour, so that’ll be a nice reward.
My aim this week is to reach half marathon distance when doing my long run. It’s less than four kilometres of an increase on my last run, so it should be achievable. I hope I’m not too diminished by my recent illness, and my energy levels are still quite a way beneath what they were two weeks ago, but I’ll listen to my body and won’t push it too far if the protestations are more vehement than they have previously been. I’ll have to start putting a plan in place for gathering donations for Pieta too. There’s a busy couple of months ahead!
