Best laid plans and why I don't like 'work'

Right. Confession time. I haven't yet traversed St Swithun's Way, as I had promised in my previous post (over a year ago). But I will. Last year's run was pole-axed by summer, to be frank. Or actually a summer of family coming to visit and a six-month-old baby.

But it will be done. It's sitting there, just over the hill, like a 34-mile long snake, lurking, waiting to see if it can chew me up and spit me out.

Enough crappy imagery - it's just a trail. Quite a nice one, actually.

One thing I have learned over the past year, training for St Swithun's way then for a 50-miler (I didn't make that start-line either, although three weeks of being violently and unpleasantly ill put paid to that one) is that I don't like work unless I am getting paid for it – and what's the point of doing something you don't like for free? I exclude housework because that is marginally better than living in a pig-sty.

But hill-work, speed-work, gym-work.. nah.

Sure, foregoing all these things won't make me the fastest runner I can be, but I am not really interested in running fast. I just want to run.

Take the half-marathon I ran a few weeks ago. Once again, summer had got in the way of anything that could be construed as organised training. I had gone for a long run every week (around two-ish hours – no idea of distance, most of my runs are classed in the “naked” or “stupid” category, with no gadgets) and I'd also biked to and from work every day. But all that dull repetitive stuff like sprint-work (there's that word again) that I had classed as “training” and considered doing when I signed up for the run was soon forgotten.

So when I toed the start-line my goal was to finish – and enjoy the scenery. A personal best was out of the question.

Or so I thought.

At halfway I felt great – and that was after the so-called tougher part of the course, over tree-covered hills and rolling farmland. So I set about going faster in the second half. And guess what? I even had enough at the end for a heroic sprint finish. And I got a trail half-marathon personal best, as well as a raging thirst for beer.

All without “training” (as opposed to running) a bit.

So back to St Swithun's way... my new philosophy is to not train at all for it. I'll just run a bit longer every week. Then one day (soon, I promise) I'll run the whole damn thing.