Aaaarrrghghghghg. Why can't anything be simple and normal and consistent for just ONE WEEK? That's all I ask. Just let me get one week of stress-free running in without something always coming along to ruin it. I woke up this morning with a really sharp, tender pain in my upper back/ribs. It really hurt when I breathed in. I thought maybe I'd just slept a bit funny but it's got worse throughout the day, to the point where I'm now having to consciously take shallower breaths to ease the pain.

Got home and was planning on just ignoring it and still going for my run. (Lovely evening - warm but with sea mist). But I did a little warm up and there's no way I'm going to be able to do it - it just hurts too much to breathe - a pretty essential activity, really. God, I'm so pissed off.

I think I may have strained something last night doing all those weights. I've only recently started coming back to the weights after the marathon training, and I was pushing it quite hard last night.

So Gareth will just have to go without me, not that we would have been together for more than a couple of minutes anyway. What I find amusing is that after months of ribbing me about being 'obsessive' about running, he is now starting to take it really seriously; plotting out all his routes on gmap, writing down his times, proudly announcing his improvements, talking about which races he's going to enter, etc. Stupid big moop.

What was supposed to be a non-running session at the gym tonight ended up including a short 3k run after all; I just felt like it. I get this strange kind of feeling if I don't run at all - like withdrawal symptons or something, and I found myself getting onto the treadmill despite myself. Only ran for twenty minutes though. Started off at around a 10.40 min mile pace and gradually moved it up till I was doing a 7.09 pace at the end. My god. It felt so fast! I'm not sure I've ever run that fast before, even if it was only for a minute or so. It's such a buzz, but I can't imagine ever being able to maintain it for long. How anyone can run like that for a whole marathon is completely beyond me.

15 x minutes crosstrainer
15 x minutes step machine
20 x minutes treadmill
30 x minutes weights

And I've ranted about this enough elsewhere, but finally: to the woman that unabashedly made off with my iPod tonight as I left it on the table by the weights for five minutes: YOU ARE A FILTHY, THIEVING, DESPICABLE WITCH and I hope you rot in hell.

Ran for the first time in five days tonight. I've had something wrong with my foot. It came on during my last run, and I just ignored it but since then it got worse. It's a very tender pain like cramp that stretches along the outside length of my right foot from the heel to the toe, and on Sunday it was so bad it was making me limp. Anyway, I don't know what caused it but I think I isolated what was prolonging it - flip-flops. When wearing flip-flops, I think I must walk in a way that puts undue pressure on this part of my foot or something. I'm always having to claw the soles to keep them from slipping off my feet and I'm sure this unnatural way of walking has something to do with it. Since reverting to normal shoes it has pretty much cleared up and tonight I ran about five miles without any problems at all.

10 x mins crosstrainer
4 x miles easy: AVG HR 154
6 x 30 second sprints: AVG HR 182

2 @ 8.02 min mile pace
2 @ 7.43 min mile pace
2 @ 7.25 min mile pace