This is, by necessity, going to be brief. Two and a half hours sleep before being up at 1am and then working straight through to midday. Four hours at best sleep before some more work and then time to head out for the club run. I was on zombie autopilot.
For all that the legs didn’t feel too bad. The left hip was sore for the solo miles I ran, so before heading a but out I did a little stretching which seemed to help. It was a small group running at the club. The first few miles were actually run at a pace I could have kept with until, with one or two with a half marathon on Sunday, dialled the pace down to a rate that would have me snoozing by the layside if I wasn’t careful.
Along five gates and a strange weather pattern in the still air as we ran through cold and warm packets of air – I don’t think I’ve ever run through air with such a clear temperature difference before. Little things like that were just about keeping me alert, but I was struggling.
At Londonthorpe with the main climb of the run tackled, I said my goodbyes to the group and pushed on alone, the thinking being the sooner I got home the sooner I could get to bed ready for the next night shift. The final miles were fairly hard going with the legs stiffening, but the pace had picked up too to be comfortably under seven minute miles, so hardly suffering too much yet from the lack of sleep.