All you need is dedication

The mist and the rain really test an amateur runner's desire, don't they? It's been unremittingly grey and damp here in London for several days (yes I know, it's living up to its global reputation) and it's now starting to become a real downer on my runs.

It has made me think a lot about the worst possible weather scenario for a run. My top 5 worst running conditions, after much reflection over lunch yesterday, would be:

1 Heavy rain combined with wind
2 Heavy rain combined with low temperatures
3 Strong wind in every single direction, even when you run in a grid fashion
4 Icy pavements
5 Non-rain rain

Non-rain rain is my new term for London's current weather - it's rain, Jim, but not as we know it. How it manages to be permanently wet without actually raining I don't know, but you've got to give London's weather kudos for creating a whole new weather condition. It's not actually raining, so not wet enough for a waterproof, but yet when you arrive home you are soaked all over. Bizarre.

On a plus side, the mornings are now much lighter so it's becoming easier to rouse myself for a pre-work run. However, the non-rain rain is accompanied by a grey blanket. It's not fog, or even really mist, more just a general 'dirtiness' of landscape. You know it should be daylight but instead you have run through a grey haze. It's like a TV with a broken brightness function.

The murky weather has made me realise that I am actually complacent about my ability to finish a half marathon. It's not really an issue of speed anymore, (although I would dearly love to knock some more minutes off my finishing time) but when I have had training setbacks (such as a hacking cough a 40-a-day smoker would envy), I have been consoling myself with the thought that I can make it round on patchy training. I just won't make it round in a good time.

Complacency is a terrible state to be in but at the moment I just feel I need to survive my runs. Life outside of running is just so complicated, and work is making it increasingly difficult to schedule in midweek runs, that it takes all my energy just to get out there, let alone really test myself.

The thing is, it's not just about the New York Half, is it? I've got to remember that the ultimate goal for this year is the Berlin Marathon in September - and there is no way I can just wing that one on just the long runs.
Somehow I have to recover that marathon fear and awe, and regain that dedication from 2009.

Somehow.

LON