Adaptation and fear.

I'm learning how well (or not) my body can adapt to twelfty million different situations all in one go. 7hr car journey (tick), long haul flight of 11hrs (tick), one tantruming 3yr old (tick), one hungry, hungry 5mth old (tick), lots of travel on holiday arrival (tick), jetlagged children (tick), sleep deprivation (tick), a car full of travel sick puke (tick), thankfully, copious amounts of daytime fun (tick) oh and a couple of runs (tick). Comrades you say?! Surely that's the easy bit? Training properly...what's that??? The kids are asleep so let me expand...

Before we had kids time was free and easy. Now we've got kids time is precious and sparse. We're on holiday, you would think fitting one run in a day should be easy peasy??? So we arrived in LA on Tuesday at 6.30pm (local time) 2.30am (UK time). Staying with our good mate Steve who now lives in LA we thought the kids would adapt pretty quickly, especially after we kept them awake for longer than normal in the hope that they'd be tired enough to sleep. Wrong, wrong and wrong again. For four nights in a row Aston was awake from 2.30am and Rosie was awake from between 3-4am. Basically this means that neither of us ran while we were in LA because neither of us could actually see out of our broken eyes never mind run. Now those of you who know me will know that I'm an all or nothing kind of girl. Open a packet of biscuits and I'll eat them all or I'll have none at all. Train for something and I'll do it properly or not at all. And this is where the whole learning to adapt has had to come in, something I've never been any good at. When I'm motivated (and I am) I barely let anything stop me from running/training. This means that I've had to really fight to keep myself motivated but able to adapt the training to A) suit my sleep deprivation but keep me moving and B) not allow running to take president over our holiday (this is our family holiday after all). Once we left LA and started to travel towards San Fransisco I was starting to get antsy. I hadn't run for four days and was starting to make bad food choices which (for me) go hand in hand with being exhausted and demotivated. The pendulum that was swinging in Comrades' favour having run 14miles easily for the first time in over a year just before we left was starting to wane. Thankfully, hitting San Fransisco was the best thing that could have happened. We headed here because there's lots for the kids to do and see but also they had their inaugural parkrun on the Saturday that we arrived. Located on Crissy Fields which basically bask beside the Golden Gate Bridge how could that not kick start my motivation?! I've never ever been anywhere where exercise is so popular. No wonder folk don't say good morning to each other over here, they'd never shut up if they did, you pass that many runners/roller bladers/cyclists it would be impossible to say hello to them all. It really is a sight to behold. A wonderful, casual happy place full of normal looking people exercising. Wonderful. So with a parkrun under my belt I was re-energised and looking forward to getting out again. Ideally I would be running for much longer than I am while I'm out here but we're on holiday and the kids (more-or-less) have to come first so early morning on Sunday I got out but only for 30mins. This morning (and here comes the fear I mentioned in the title) we were up too early for me to run outside (that's kids for you) so I went into the hotel gym to do an hour on the dreadmill. Oh. My. Word. The hour wasn't hard, the pace wasn't hard, the monotony wasn't hard but the heat in there nearly killed me. How on earth am I going to manage in Comrades if after 7 miles on a treadmill in a hotel gym I feel hideous?! Eeeeeeeeeek!!!

So there you have it. I'm learning how to adapt to my situation like a big girl and not stress over distances or days when I just can't get out to run. I am however going to have to work out a plan to deal with the heat better. Answers on a postcard please.

H