“Even a bad run is better than no run”… is it?

I love an inspirational quote – I love trawling through Instagram when I am trying to get the energy up to leave the house for a long run and seeing motivational post after motivational post. However… today I am totally calling out the quote “Even a bad run is better than no run”. I am not sure that it is true. In fact I go so far as to say it is a lie.

This is a fairly honest post about the pain and misery that is the flip side of running – warning now… this isn’t a nice happy post. So if you don’t want to see the other side of the endorphin fuelled posts then stop reading now.

I am currently training for the London Marathon and am reaching that point where you start to doubt whether you can do it – the long runs are getting realllllly long, the weeks are ticking by, the little nagging injuries have become shouting injuries.

I am sat here writing this  in my compression socks, sore knee rested up on a footstall aching from head to toe. Today I had an awful run. One of those runs which from the first foot step felt like it was going to be an uphill struggle. A run where the route was ill planned, the miles passed slowly, kit I have worn for millions of runs rubbed… a run where it felt like every runner was sprinting past me and I was running through treacle with a concrete block tied to my ankles.

Today was only supposed to be 13 miles, a low mileage week before next week’s 20miler. I persisted with the run – even though at mile 6 my knee started to hurt and the doubts started to creep in about my abilities to run the Marathon in 6 weeks. Maybe I should have bailed on the run at that point – told myself it was to avoid further injury. Perhaps I shouldn’t have run at all – I wasn’t in the mood for it.

So back to that quote: “Even a bad run is better than no run”…

This bad run has left me in a spiral of doubt and dreading the 20miler planned for next weekend. Sometimes no run is better than a bad run, especially if you let that bad run impact your confidence and motivation for future runs.

I need to shake off this bad run… but for this evening I am going to wallow in it whilst drinking my turmeric smoothie and doing all things you are supposed to do after a long run.

Have you hit this point in your training? How do you “shake off” the bad run?