There comes a point in most ventures where you just have to know when to quit. With running the temptation to give up is never far from your mind, that little voice that whispers in your ear, "You've done enough or this is too hard or this hurts or stop now and it'll all be over..."
I've not yet had that voice convince me that that is the correct course of action during a race, though I've been close. However, the voice has persuaded me not to turn up on the start line several times, and that is usually when it is the voice of reason and all-round sensibleness (when competing would be putting me at risk of longer term injury). And it has persuaded me not to step out the front door on a training run, but that is when it is the voice of sloth and general laziness more than anything else.
But I hear the voice at other times, in relation to things other than running too, and today was one of those occasions.
The RSPCA competition for Rescue Animal of the Year ran for much longer than anticipated due to website issues at their end. At the original closing date, Benny was well in the lead. There had been a strong challenge for votes from a lovely little rabbit called Ken, but when I had put the call out in the Runnersworld virtual world, where I chat to many like-minded souls who had been following our story with interest for several months, they had joined the voting cause. However, on the eve of the extended closing date there was a sudden surge of overnight voting for Ben the cat and then the RSPCA site went offline again. Over the weekend, the runners rallied and spread the word to restore Bear's lead, but there was one final overnight voting deluge that took Ben into first place this morning.
I knew I could ask the runners for a third time to push Benny back into first place, but we decided enough was enough; the time had come to quit.
However, the Runnersworld community were to surprise us again this evening. Every year the parent magazine of the online forums, Runners World, run a competition to win a place in a spring marathon (it had been London, but they had changed to Paris for the last couple of years) where the winners gain goodies from the sponsors, travel and accommodation to the event and online coaching with occasional training weekends from respected coaches and support teams. Last year, the regular forum contributors decided to run an unofficial, parallel competition for peer-to-peer mentoring (there were lots of political reasons for this, which I won't go into here) and the six forum winners, though they didn't get any branded goodies, met with considerable success with their training and marathon running last season. So, like last year, when the forum competition opened, I entered. And tonight, I found out that I had won!
I am yet to make official contact with my mentor/coach, but it means I'm going to have a "proper" training plan! I will finally have to confront my lazy approach to long, slow miles and, as I have said several times already, get my bottom out the door to face up to some speed work.
The great thing is that this plan should be tailored to my off road running and mine and Benny's challenge events this year.
It looks like Team Benny just gained a new member - I wonder if he has any idea what he has let himself in for by taking us on?
