To race or not to race...

...that is the question I was asking myself throughout tonight's run.

I'm trying to decide whether to do the Chorley 4.4 on Wednesday night.  As you might be aware, I fell out with racing earlier this year and haven't raced since the road relays in March.  I don't want to do the race on Wednesday but I know that the longer I leave it, the worse my anxiety of racing will get.

I'm not going to run it because it's part of the road champs, as I have no chance of getting anywhere with that this year now, haven't done enough races, but it's just a race I have always quite liked so I thought it might be a good one to help me get back into it.

I've never liked racing (apart from the crossing the finish line bit of course) but I've always wanted to like it, which is why I kept doing it in the hope that the more races I did, the less bothered I would be beforehand, but it doesn't seem to have worked and I still get terrible anxiety and spend the hours before a race trying to talk myself out of it.  Most of you will be thinking 'why race if you hate it so much' but, like I said, I WANT to start to enjoy it.  I just don't know how to take the pressure off myself and stop the anxiety.  The only pressure is the pressure I put on myself and I'm well aware of that.

Tonight's run was a leisurely plod to the pub with Ruby.  I set off down towards the school, where I bumped into Dave Jackson and had a natter for ten minutes about all sorts from dogs to speed training.  Dave gave me some pretty good training advice that I'll definitely be trying out.

We then continued on our way, running down to Rivington Reservoir and following it along to the prep school.  We then turned right past the bowling club and up towards Yarrow.  I do this route a lot at the minute because I know there's plenty of water around for Ruby to drink in this hot weather.  We carried on all the way to the road, where we turned left down the hill then left again at the bottom and along Knowsley Lane all the way to the Yew Tree.

By now I was really looking forward to a cold drink but as we went round the bend and the pub came into sight, I could see no cars at all in the car park and the place looking very quite.  Yes, it was closed.

Duncan pulled up about ten minutes later as I had arranged to meet him there and he was gutted too so we drove round to the bowling club and had a drink there instead.


Total distance - 4.25 miles

http://www.strava.com/activities/175426972