A leap into the unknown

Quite a bit has been going on since the last post. So here's a quick catch-up:

I quit my job.

Work has been a struggle for a long time. If I'm honest, from the very first day I started working in secondary school. I moved into secondary as I had made a poor choice with a primary school job and needed to move on and start afresh before the wheels came off. Anyway, I've stuck at secondary for three and a half years. In all that time I have never come home feeling like it's been a good day at work. That is not a sustainable way of living, especially when the salary as a TA is way under what even a single person can live off let alone me bringing up 2 kids. So after an awful lot of soul-searching I've jumped. With no job to go to. Which is, quite frankly, terrifying.

I have several ideas of what to do next so I'm applying for jobs as well as deciding on some courses that might allow me to turn doing things I love into things that will earn me some money too. At least it's exam season coming up and there will be invigilating which should see us through until July if nothing else works out.

Running.

As far as running goes, the roller coaster continues but I suspect it's been like that due to the enormous stresses caused by the work situation. My weight has been all over the place, I haven't been eating well or recovering well from training sessions, I've developed a few slightly concerning niggles and now ended up 6 days out from the first big race of the year very run down and with viral tonsillitis. This week I've run twice, 8 miles in total.

The lesson there is that you absolutely MUST include the 'bad' stresses from life, work etc with the 'good' stress from training. Both raise cortisol and both need adequate recovery. If you're using one form of stress to mitigate the other load of stress then eventually it's all going to go wrong. And so it has with me. Lesson learned.

Ageing.

I'm also facing the stark reality of having to completely rethink how I train in order to be as fit and healthy as I can whilst the inevitable changes of age begin to make a significant impact. The really tricky bit is how to find that balance between staving off the midlife fat and weight gain (which you do by shorter, sharper, harder workouts) and maintaining/ improving endurance so that I can continue to enjoy running ultras without losing lots of muscle and becoming fat and slow. I may need to dump the goal of a sub 24 100 miler this year and instead just focus on a new plan of attack for training.

Injury.

My fella has spent the start of this year injured. Whilst it's been understandably miserable for him I've also found it really hard. We don't run a lot together but being unable to run together at all has really affected me and taken away some of the enjoyment of a long Sunday run. Usually I have no problem training alone, often I prefer it, but without his company to look forward to some of my longer weekend runs have been very hard going. He's just back on his feet now and we're supposed to be running a 50 miler together this coming weekend. With the state we're both in it could be an interesting race...