Summer time, and the running is anything but easy as family commitments interfere

Fiona Russell, 40, is training for the Baxters Loch Ness Marathon on 5 October. Every fortnight she reports on her progress.

AH, THE summer holidays. Or should that be “argh, the summer holidays!”?

As any working mum will know, while the long school break offers a chance to hang out with the kids, it also requires a masters degree in juggling.

If I had thought that the marathon training sessions were hard enough to fit into the family’s ordinary term-time routine, those past weeks seem almost halcyon compared with the first fortnight of the school break.

My weekly running schedule must now take into account my nine-year-old daughter Havana’s social life, activities diary and the numerous times when she simply pops into my office (I work from home) to whinge about being bored.

The last two weeks have been unsatisfactory on many levels. Because I have felt guilty about not spending enough quality time with my wee girl, I have worried about taking my eye off work and I have stressed about missing training sessions.

My lowest moment may have been leaving Havana and husband Vik tucking into ice-cream in a café as I set off with martyred resolve to run home from a lovely Saturday afternoon spent in Glasgow’s west end.

In fact, several of my running opportunities have felt pretty desperate. I have run back from a Sunday afternoon trip to the local dump. I have arrived dripping with sweat at a work meeting in town (while Havana visited a pal) and I once got up at 6am on a wet, wild morning to run before my husband left for work.

Another running outing seemed cunning at the time, although in retrospect it makes me look obsessive.

I decided that I could combine a trip to see my parents in the Borders with a mad-cap 12km trail I had heard about. We will be honouring our family duties, I suggested to Vik. We can get granny to look after Havana, so we have time to ourselves, I pleaded. I might even be able to write about it, and earn some money, I hinted. I want to do it and if you don’t then you can stay home, I grumped.

In the end, Vik agreed to drive for hours and hours through heavy rain to run a race that lasted only 65 minutes.

Thankfully (for my marriage) the Dirty Dozen, part of an adventure weekend at Traquair called, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Dirty Weekend, turned out to be well worth the journey.

The course, along the River Tweed and up and down a maze of steep forest tracks, was hugely challenging but atmospheric and surprisingly entertaining.

And while a 12km run was previously at the limits of my fitness, thanks to the marathon training I felt I could push myself quite hard. Amazingly, I crossed the finish line 22nd overall and fifth lady. Not bad for an old mummy bird like me – and it turns out that running a race is ideal training.

According to Mel Edwards, a marathon coach, occasional races during a marathon training programme are beneficial.

Edwards, himself a former British long-distance champion, says: “Races make you run harder than you would normally, so you benefit physically from the extra exertion.

“Mentally it’s also good to experience a race so that you know better what to expect when the big marathon day comes.”

He suggests that I enter a 10km road race and a half-marathon in the next six weeks. I nod sagely in agreement, but all I can feel is rising panic over all the work/family/husband commitments. Can I make it through the next five weeks?

• For details of the Baxters Loch Ness Marathon, log on to www.lochnessmarathon.com