I remembered last night what it is like trying to run in hay fever season – hard work!

The weather in the last week has been un-Britishly seasonal – i.e. it’s July and not raining and blowing a northerly gale. In fact people are complaining it’s too hot, something which is typically British. We get very little decent weather in this country, and it would appear that having moaned throughout the year that we never get a decent summer, the only thing we can do when it finally does arrive is to moan about it…!

To be fair, it was jolly warm on Saturday. I was stood outside at a village fayre all day – unfortunately lacking in shade – so I got very hot indeed and have the sunburn to prove it!

As a result of work, weather and life in general, I’ve done very little running, as per my last update, since the Bangor 10k in early June. In fact yesterday was the first time since late May I’d even run further than 10k in one session.

Having been very warm, I waited until it should have cooled off a little before donning my running shoes. However, I got to 9.30pm and decided I couldn’t leave it any later. The pollen was like running into a vacuum, breathing was so difficult and at about 3 miles I needed to walk just to get my lungs to behave and to get some water inside me (I’m rubbish at running and drinking at the same time). By 8 miles I realised that was about as far as I was going to be travelling, which was fortunate that was the distance I had chosen to go for. It was a simple route I’ve used many times, a circular route out to Marple and back. Clearly one starts and ends at the same altitude but one direction does seem to be predominantly downhill compared to the other. That’s the route I took last night.

Over breakfast this morning I downloaded the statistics and to be fair they weren’t too disappointing – 8 miles in 60m41s – OK it’s about 4 minutes off my best, but in the circumstances I’ve no complaints.

Just glad I didn’t do the reverse route otherwise I’d still probably be out there finishing off!

What it has highlighted is that, hay fever or no hay fever, I need to work pretty hard over the next 3 weeks ahead of the North Wales Half-Marathon. It’s a far from simple course (ok we’re not talking another Snowdon or Buxton) and I need to be a little bit more towards where I was 6 weeks ago. I then have a few more weeks to prepare for the challenge of 3 HM’s in 3 consecutive weekends.

I must say I’ve paid for the exertion today though.

I’m looking forward to getting back into it all. To me, a half-marathon is 95+ minutes of me-time, pure indulgence in being away from everyone and everything. No concerns outside of what I’m doing in the immediate timeframe. It’s the only time I truly switch off.

What’s there not to like about that? Especially if you get a T-shirt at the end of it!