I was thinking yesterday about language. Or rather terminology. If you hang out too much on social media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that no one ever just ‘does’ a long run. They smash it. They wallop it. They annihilate it. They downright get violent with it. But you know what they – we – are all actually doing? We’re being good boys and girls, and doing our homework: we’re practising.

It’s not exactly a social media friendly buzzword, recalling as it does tortuous attempts to master piano basics or your times tables. But really, that is basically what you are doing. Long runs – at least when you are half or full marathon training – are as much about practising fighting the voices in the head as they are increasing the endurance in the legs and lungs. You know you can run faster, so you practice running longer. You practice the bits when your head says give up, before you point out to it that actually your legs feel ok. You practice your mantras to block out those voices (for some reason, yesterday, my usual Steve Way-inspired ‘Don’t be shit’ was replaced by Dory’s ‘Just keep swimming’)

So, children, did you do your homework this weekend? Or were you – to tortuously extend the analogy far beyond it’s natural life – sitting running’s equivalent of an exam? Racing, parkrunning, or training – as always, come and share your experiences below the line.

One small note, though, before I hand over – usually the comments on this blog close after a standard three days. We’re now going to be keeping them open a week, effectively until the new one launches, so you will hopefully have somewhere to keep chatting! Please do let me know by email or by Twitter if you want to draw my attention back to something, or indeed ask me something that can fit in a tweet.

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