Grand Raid des Pyrenees - So near, yet...
Oops. Not done one of these in a while. Sorry about that. I'm a bit of a mixed-bag of thoughts today. After a mediocre season of training, and a fairly odd summer all round, I failed to complete at the Grand Raid des Pyrenees. I'm disappointed, but not surprised or annoyed, and while there's a multitude of reasons, they're exactly that - reasons not excuses. This post is maybe to try and state some of them, for my own cathartic benefit. Frankly, my training this year has been poor, and the GRP is not a race that someone like me can afford not to train properly for. I don't have any natural talent as a runner, so it has to be the hard work route, and that didn't happen. I've had a bunch of niggling, awkward, minor-but-sufficient-to-really-upset-things injuries since January: lower back and hip pain for most of Janathon; throat infection and breathing trouble at the Deerstalker; knee, ankle and IT niggles in June. Nothing huge, nothing fatalistic, just st...