Today I was faced with the most embarrassingly girly running dilemma because I had a hair cut booked at 12.15. Now, hair cuts and giving blood are my two immovable, inarguable excuses for not running afterwards. Blood donation because a nice nurse in uniform tells you not to do anything strenuous for the rest of the day (incidentally, I did nearly faint once after giving blood. I decided that it was an efficient plan to donate and then leg it across the county to get to the final fitting of my wedding dress. The dressmaker will be forever haunted by the sight of my meringue-clad form flat-out on her spare bed with my mother hoisting my legs in the air) and hair cuts because the hours afterwards are the only time I will look anywhere near groomed until my next appointment. I like to treasure that time.

However, despite my moaning about early morning runs, I am a bit more of a lark than an owl and swear that the morning is the best time to get things done. As we’re getting ourselves sorted for our imminent trip to the land of Jogblog (alright, a tent on a sheep farm in Kent), it made more sense to postpone the run until the evening – this is a dangerous game to play, especially during an Athon, as my desire to leave the house tends to wane as the day goes on.

It wasn’t that I procrastinated before tonight’s run, I stalled. Pure and simple stalling. I messed around, pulled faces and sulked at the back door until Ginge decided to ignore me. After a not too brilliant night’s sleep, I had retired to bed for a nap in the afternoon and just enjoyed lounging with my book for a bit. By this time it was nearly 7 o’clock, if it wasn’t for Juneathon I would probably still be in bed.

I was less than keen because I thought that my legs would be weary, but I bounded off as if we were still in the first week of Juneathon and did a perky three miles at 9.23min/mile. I’m really enjoying the fact that I’m having one of those spells where your running just seems to click into pace – even when I think I’m plodding, I ask Miles and he reassures me that I’m doing a pace that I would have thought of as quick a matter of weeks ago.

The saviour of my legs (I think) has been having a ‘rest day’ between runs – even though I’ve been running every day, mixing up my morning and evening runs has given me 36 and 24 hours between outings. I tell you what though, I can’t wait for a proper day off.

UPDATE: Ginge has just pointed out that Day 11 wasn’t showing up in the archive, but I’ve twiddled a few things and it is now. It’s a canal run that includes photos of a u-boat of all things and is a bit more interesting than yesterday’s effort.

Today is the (nearly) the halfway point in Juneathon – aren’t we all doing well? Personally, I’m quite chuffed to be 4 miles ahead of where I was in Juneathon 2010. (EDIT: A quite frankly pissed JogBlog has just pointed out that the halfway point is tomorrow. It’s actually been two weeks, which is where my confusion came from. I am an idiot.

Ginge and I had planned a 6 mile loop after work, but the wheels quickly fell off that particular plan. I’d had a hectic day at work – lunch was 15 minutes in Tesco’s car park and the only time I spent at my desk was the odd 5 minutes to make phone calls between other stuff. I’m not complaining, I like to be busy, but it was non-stop and there was a definite lack of hydration throughout the day. I tried to redeem myself with two glasses of water at half four, though that was probably too little too late. The end result was that I was ill-prepared and knew tonight’s run was going to be hard. I say ‘knew’, in reality this might have been ‘made’.

Ginge was feeling tired too, so we re-routed at the 2 mile mark, followed his internal compass off-road and trootted off onto an unknown path into the woods. A bit of mud and some nervous scrambling later, we were down at the lodge, did a lap and then faced the long incline of my old nemesis hill. I’d been bit a bit stop-start throughout the run and, although I perked up during the pretend trail running, I found myself grinding to a halt as we reached the main road. Each step was heavier than the last, slowing me down as if I was wading through treacle. So I stopped. After a quick  whinge, I reminded myself that if I ran home I would get my tea quicker, had a quick motivational kick up the arse from Ginge and tackled the hill on much fresher legs than I expected.

4 miles done. It was hard, but the worst thing was the nagging feeling that my head had made it even harder.