Yesterday I was supposed to do my Magic Plan’s 6 minute assessment run (basically warm up, easy run, walk, run as far as I can in 6 minutes, collapse, easy run, obsessively check how this has changed the plan). However, I was still feeling grotty, we had a Christmas tree to take down and my new trainers were cruelly snatched away from me and taken back to the UPS depot. In no mood to put some effort in,  I rescheduled (which is why I love TrainAsONE) and just did my strength stuff. I also happened to be flipping through twitter when I spotted another hip flexor exercise from Kinetic Revolution and tried that out as well.

Today was another matter. Mini Ginge blessed me with a rare lie in til 8 and I was feeling a lot more human this morning. We had a lovely adventure with Gran doing the big shop at Morrisons and then tramping around the park where we fed the ducks…

  And spotted some remarkably early snowdrops. 

 

Then we had a brew and one of us fell asleep in the car on the way home. This gave me chance to do my strength stuff without interruption and answer the door to the nice man who brought me these beauties.   

They are the girliest trainees that I have ever owned but were the only ones available in clown size. 

It seemed rude not give them an outing, so I pottered off for my run and came home to discover that my 6 minute run was exactly the same pace as in October. This gives me a bit of optimism that I haven’t lost that much fitness whilst having a very lazy December.

But that is only one parcel and the title of this post is the plural. Well, even though I didn’t get my trainers yesterday, the postman did bring me a belated Christmas present from Ginge. And then today, I received the lovely sparkly Winter 10k medal from Pow Virtual Running, which looks like a rather splendid way to start the new year’s bling.

  

Today the magic plan said not to run and I was happy to oblige. 

I have had our office cold since before Christmas and struggled to sleep because my nose suddenly blocked again. What’s weird is that I now feel as if I’m at the start of a cold, which either means that my existing cold has regressed or I now have two colds at the same time. 

I did my various fitness challenges and core strength stuff, which already seems to be helping as my hips are less achy and I feel less creaky when I get out of bed in the morning. 

By nature I am a procrastinator, but not today. Oh no. Today the plan was dictated by the weather; get out early, take Mini-Ginge to a playground before the rain set in for the day, have a rainy afternoon mooching around at home, run in the evening hopefully catching the brief window when the rain was ‘light’ (according to the Met Office). It all went according to plan until about three o’clock when I suddenly thought why wait until it’s dark, when even the light rain would seem heavy and I’d get all sulky about going out. I might as well just get it done, so I got changed and did the 47 minutes that my plan asked from me. 

Of course it rained for all 47 minutes. But it was mostly daylight (which helped) with the streetlights coming on at the halfway point of my run. And then the rain became even heavier, but I didn’t care because I was on my way home by then. So yay me for just getting it done.

It was slightly harder doing my strength exercises though…

  

Maybe it was after having such a lovely day with my waffles family yesterday, maybe I was just a bit hungry, but I spent a good chunk of today surrounded by a fog of negativity. Poor Ginge had to endure my crap mood, all the while knowing that a good run would clear my head and improve my disposition. If only I would stop being such a mardy and just get my trainers on.

Speaking of trainers, mine are a bit battle scarred post-marathon and it’s about time that I replaced them. I look on enviously at people’s photos of gorgeous trainers in rainbow colours. Unfortunately due to the size and wonkiness of my great flippers, I am limited to whatever is available in “well cushioned boat”. Since I started running, I have flipped between New Balance 1260 and Asics Gel Kayanos, and while we were heading up the M6, Ginge suggested a detour to the New Balance factory shop at Shap. It’s great there, the staff are really knowledgable (and patient) and I picked up my new shoes for £68 (well £62.50, plus a fiver p&p because they didn’t have my exact size so they ordered them in from another branch). Hopefully I will be re-shod on Tuesday. 

Today my Magic Plan demanded an assessment run, which involves a 5 minute gentle warm up, 5 at an easy pace, a couple of minutes walk and then 3.2km as quick as I can, followed by another minute’s walk and 5 more easy. I have a love hate relationship with my assessment runs, I like to see how I’m doing, but I do have a tendency to overthink them and talk myself out of pushing myself too much. I suspect that if I ran these with someone else, they would definitely be faster.

After my run I lunged, planked, bridged and pressed up, before settling down (in a much better mood, he knows me far too well) with pie and the remains of a giant Ferrero Rocher.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been cheerfully Liking people’s tweets about Janathon and it was only this morning that I realised that I hadn’t actually signed up myself. Oops. My Athon-denial was clearly getting the better of me this year. 

I’m not very good at all the resolution business, most years I will buy a diary in the faint hope that one year I will become one of those people who Keeps a Diary (I will also have homemade biscuits in the biscuit tin and always wear matching undies). This year I have set myself some vague running goals, I would like to get my 5k and 10k back to pre-pregnancy times (or better if I’m not too decrepit for that), and I would like to have another punt at a marathon that isn’t run in a wind tunnel. Other than that, I would like to work on becoming generally stronger, but in particular trying to sort out the tight hip flexors/lower back niggles that have been plaguing me for months. The answer to this seems to be to do some specific stretches and improve my core strength (the latter is the answer to everything from pelvic floors to back pain to sucking in my flabby ‘mum tum‘ beer and pie belly). I would also like to be able to do a proper press up, just the one – my upper body is as weak as a kitten.

With this in mind, Kat has recommended two apps 30 day fitness challenges and Gaiam yoga studio, and seeing as she introduced me to The Magic Plan, I would be a fool not to give them a try.

Because I ran yesterday (a New Year’s Eve 10k to earn the Pow Virtual Running winter medal) and The Magic Plan demands that I run tomorrow, today’s Janathon was 3 kneeling press ups, an assortment of lunges and a bit of bridging. Oh, and waffles, lots of lovely waffles…