I made bold statements a couple of weeks back about not cheating or skiving, since when I've skived more than at any other time during my training!

I've just really been struggling to get motivated. OK, so, yes, it has been really cold this week and wet at times. But at 6 in the morning, it's generally not been too bad. The chill's been there, but it's been dry and not too windy. But still I couldn't be arsed.

I'm relieved to find out from Twitter conversations that I'm not alone in this and that it's not unusual. It would be oh so easy to slip into a self-doubting, self-loathing frame of mind and give up altogether. But, and I love this about the social interweb, I've been getting encouragement and tips and it's been too fluffy for words.

In recent runs, I've also started seeing some of the people I work with out and about. There's quite a bunch of us doing both the half and full marathons in Brighton and, nice as it is to exchange nods and smiles with everyone (and I really do enjoy that!), seeing people you know always gives a different kind of boost. For me it usually comes in the form of desperate-not-to-embarrass-myself-better-put-some-effort-in adrenalin.

So today I drove down to Hove lagoon - it seems LOTS of people do this, so my shame at taking a drive in order to do a run is now gone - to do the interval session I should have done earlier in the week. Having not run at all this week so far, I had a number of sessions I could choose from and, as mentioned a few times previously, I believe these sessions are the ones that really make a difference to both my speed and stamina.

It was 40 minutes today altogether. 4 lots of 7.5 minutes (split into 3.5 minutes of easy jogging and 4 minutes of level 4 painfulness), with the last 10 minutes at level 3. And I covered 4.47 miles. This is over a third of a mile MORE than I did last time I did this same session. So I'm chuffed, and becoming more convinced that I might finally have reached a level of fitness that means a few missed days aren't going to leave me incapable of making it to the end of the road! I'll be doing a 12 mile run tomorrow, and then next Sunday's the half marathon. I'm hoping to get out consistently during the week, to build up properly, but am making no claims given how badly it's gone since I last did that!

P.S. Waistline still not shrinking. No fair.