Thursday Morning

The radio program I present, Lincoln A to Z, is formulated by 52 randomly selected grids from the Lincoln A to Z map. We have a basic structure, but the tone and timbre of each program is guided by the contents of the grid. Out of the 30 programs we’ve made so far, its fair to say that a couple have left my producer and I scratching our heads and wondering what went wrong. By no means are these programs terrible, they just didn’t flow or turn out how we planned.

OK, one was particularly terrible, but once the program was over we retired to the office (pub) to discuss how to improve and avoid making the same mistakes again.

During a period of training, at least one run will be atrocious. It can be the simplest thing that knocks you, a stitch, traffic lights or tripping over a dog. Its frustrating at the time, feelings of failure kick in, heightened by the fact that you are out of breath. But I know that like the occasional below par radio programs (you try making an hour and a half radio program about a bungalow heavy street in suburbia), I know that its not the end of the world and that rather than it be a failure, it is in fact these hiccups that make you better in the long run.

The internet, bless it, is full of annoyingly positive statements like this:

My previous Lincoln 10K run, 3 years ago, wasn’t so great. I didn’t feel comfortable running and at the 7K mark I was pooped. At that point an old school friend that I’d not seen for years appeared, had a chat, patted me on the back and ran off. It felt great and got me over the line.

Its two weeks until race day and I haven’t yet had a bad run. Bully for me, but I’m starting to worry that it will rear its ugly head on the big day. Its broken into my mind during the training. This week, the aforementioned tripping over a dog happened. Following embarrassment and apologies from all parties (even the dog looked down), I convinced myself that this was it, the bad run I’d been waiting for. However, I quickly found my rhythm again, which left me confused. The paradox of wanting to get the bad run out of the way, but being fine to carry on consumed my thinking as I ran and before I knew it I was across my finish line.

I’ve mentioned before about the mind over matter during running, Now I’m sure that positive thinking needs to happen long before the run even starts and that this might just enable me to elude those bad runs once and for all.

Friday Afternoon

With all the inevitability of a home made rope swing video on You’ve Been Framed, today’s run was terrible – running mainly into a head wind, it included a cross word with a lorry driver that was losing his load and a stitch.

Thank god that’s out of the way.

Paul Tyler is the presenter of Lincoln A to Z on Siren FM

@lincolnatoz