Total mileage for August: 94.4 miles (or) 151.9 kilometers

It’s 11am on a Monday morning when I begin to compose this blog. It is the 3rd of September, I am on day 4 of 5 if a run of shifts. The weather looks nice through the small swatch of window I can see across the operational area. I have been at work for 4 hours, up for 5, and I estimate that I am about 12 hours behind on my sleep. So as I suck down my second cup of Costa coffee – I am a Starbucks man but my buildings cafe has a Costa franchise and it’s the best coffee within walking distance of my transmission suite so I make do – I think back to last night.

Last night when neither the driving rain or a partially deflated tyre on my bicycle (which became flatter when I attempted to pump it up using the various bicycle pumps available at the arcology but failed, epically, since they were all broken. Although the media conglomerate I work for projects an attitude of greenness, on the ground it tends to fail on the ground.) Were going to stop me from running, it was fatigue, my inner lazy-ass fatso, that got the better of me. I got as far as the door, after changing into my running gear before he got the better of me and I had an embarrassing ‘screw this’ moment so abandoned the run.

The coffee is beginning to kick in now as this next paragraph is flowing more freely than the first two and I feel slightly more alert. On analysis I had a particularly busy three days at work. I did manage to squeeze in a satisfying 10K run on the Friday; although that plus the full on 12 hour shifts x 3 simply exacerbates the lack of sleep. I have also learnt, from painful experience that running while knackered is not often a good idea and on the two occasions when I have done this, I have fallen over and taken my knees out of commission for a week. With 27 days until the Ealing half I cannot afford an unnecessary injury. Excuses, excuses.

Enough winging, time to look to the future. Winter is coming, the evenings are getting darker so I need to start planning some night time runs since most of my current evening routes are unlit. Tonight I intend to run, partly from the guilt of not running yesterday and partly because today I am less busy – hence my ability to blog while at work. I enjoy testing new routes and if this street route works it may become my regular 6/7 miler for the next 6 months. I have a hilly half planned for Wednesday, with the potential to take it further – maybe to 14 miles – depending on how I feel.

Do you find it hard to run when you are sleep deprived? Do you find it hard fitting in runs some weeks?

Theoretically regular runs are easy to establish, but I have found the human mind and the limitations of the human body can often upset easy to maintain schedules, do you have any techniques to battle against the fat lazy person inside yourself who simply wants to eat pizza, drink beer and play on the Xbox?