Unsurprisingly I’ve been lacking running mojo since Six Inch. I knew I would be like this – the Marathon Talk guys suggest giving yourself one day’s grace for every mile you’ve raced. Jeremy’s physiotherapist Lauren says she takes six weeks (and she’s a two and a half hour marathoner). She also said Robert de Castella takes 10 weeks to recover from a race.

I think it is related to distance. I’m fine running five kilometres or ten kilometres, so Masters Athletics Sunday races are great but anything beyond 12 or so holds little interest. My brain now associates 15+ as requiring some actual training. As I don’t much feel like following a training plan, signing up for the Busselton half marathon didn’t appeal.

Of course, because Busselton is two days away I’m now experiencing occasional pangs of regret about signing up for the 10k instead. I’m firmly squishing them as they are only tiny pangs of regret, but it feels like the pins and needles you get when blood returns to a limb – all that desire is coming back to life again.

I’ve been in this situation before. After the first half marathon; which as I’ve said before was the only one I diligently trained for, I didn’t do much by way of running. I did the Women’s Triathlon again, I did a very occasional Sunday long run but I mainly did only parkrun. I kept active a bit – I cycled the 80km City of Armadale gran fondo, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until I accidentally did 17km when intending to do a 10km training run for City to Surf that I decided to do the half marathon instead of the 12km race.

Jeremy and I had already entered the Sydney Blackmores half marathon when I entered the Perth City to Surf, so I knew that I had one coming up, but I was intending on easing myself into it. Instead I ran two half marathons about three weeks apart, and once we came back from Sydney we decided to go for PBs at the Fremantle half as well two weeks later.

My mojo is coming back, and it does feel good to have it popping back into my life. I don’t know if I’ll ever be at the stage where I can back up Six Inch with Lark Hill two months later, but it’s probably a learned endurance thing that I’m just yet to cultivate.