The Around the Bay (ATB) road race is five weeks away now.

Tick. Tock.

And you know how I made a bold statement last week?

I said I was going to run 20km this week.

I said it. But alas, I didn’t do it.

I saw a friend’s post about “eating the frog” first thing in the morning. It hit home.

The idea is that if you have to eat a frog, it’s better to eat it as soon as possible. Otherwise, you’ll be dreading having to eat the frog all day. And you’ll keep putting it off.

Sometimes I’m good at “eating my frogs”. But not always.

Unfortunately, my 20km run was my “frog”. And I let time get away from me.

Long runs are a big time commitment. And I should have done mine early in the day.

On the plus side, I got in a couple of shorter runs during the week.

And I’m going to focus on stretching.

It seems counter-intuitive to focus on stretching when I need to increase my distance running. But my experience has been that tight muscles cause problems. Especially when the distance increases.

I’ve had IT Band issues when I’ve run longer than 16km. I would like to avoid those problems. I needed physio to help remedy the issue.

And the main culprit? Hips and ankles that weren’t loose.

So, I know that stretching is key for me to be able to the longer distances done.

I’ve got a busy week ahead of me this week, so I’m not going to make any bold statements this time.

We’ll see what kind of training I can fit in.