Progress....hmmm.

The point of a blog is to be honest right? That's why people read them, I think. So, here's the honesty: I am not doing very well in my training. I've not done as much as I'd hoped, I've not progressed at all really and I'm still finding a 10 minute run really hard. How pathetic!

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the gym and a funny thing happened - at first there seemed to be blank spots in my vision that were really blurry, or just not "visible" although there weren't any actual dark areas or anything. Then I got a weird shimmering in my vision, top left. It wasn't in one eye or the other, it was there when I closed either eye, and it started around the outside of my vision and spread until most of my vision was filled with shimmering and I couldn't see. I've since googled it and discovered it was a visual migraine. I wasn't doing anything particularly strenuous, but it freaked me out a bit. I wondered if maybe I was overdoing it, but in hindsight, I think that's a bit silly. It's not like I've been going crazy with running - I'd only been on a few short runs!

So anyway, I didn't run for a week or so after that. The next time I ran was a day when I felt tired and achy and my body didn't feel right at all. But I'm a bit of a hypochondriac, and I'm trying not to be, so I told myself to get on and do it anyway. And good god did it hurt. I got about a minute into it and my chest felt like it was going to explode and my body just would not keep going. My legs were like lead. I pretty much collapsed by the side of the road and had to sit for a few minutes, feeling sorry for myself.

At that point, I really started to question what the hell I was doing. I'm not cut out for this. My body is not a running body. I can only just get round the block without puking, and that's on a good day. But then I thought, just get up. You can't do it yet because you aren't just getting on with it. It's going to be hard. It's going to be bloody horrible. It's not supposed to be nice! So I got up and I ran again and it still hurt, but I kept going until I got round the block and home again. I felt a bit better then, but still very apprehensive.

Since then, I've only run once, but I did keep going and not stop, even though it was still only 10 minutes. I'm not doing enough yet and I should be progressing onto 20 minute and half hour runs by now, so I'm concerned. I think I keep hoping that I'll wake up one day and really feel like going running and suddenly my body will be good at it, but that's not going to happen. It's going to take a lot of hard work to get to that point, and I need to knuckle down and get on with it, or this is never going to happen.