It's amazing how much five weeks off running can do to your fitness. Of course I've had longer layoffs, and I never really thought about how much fitness I could lose, but this time it's different. The past 6-8 months have seen so much improvements in my running that I'm keen to not let it slip.
But when your parents are in town and it's their first time in the UK and Europe, then you're on holiday with your parents. So in the past month or so, as soon as I returned from holiday, I've been busy getting back into running and building those fitness levels again.
And I admit I've found it a real struggle. It was like learning how to run properly again. The legs felt quite weird and breathing has been far from controlled. Combined with the seasonably warm weather, and some unseasonably random weather altogether, progress has been slower than I would've liked.
To give some examples, I've been running my intervals around 10-15 seconds per km slower than normal at club nights and my recent parkrun times have been over 20 minutes, making my 19:19 from three months ago a very distant target to achieve.
I've still got a fair way to go to get back to my best, but as the training cycle progresses and if I can replicate the same training formula that I used to prepare for Paris, then I'm confident that I can reach my best..... and even exceed it.
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