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In which I challenge Janathoners to give blood in January

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A couple of days ago on Twitter, Running Dan declared his intention to be brave and start donating blood. Twitter being Twitter, lots of people turned round and said “it’s not that scary, go on, you know want to”, and so Dan rang the nice blood people and signed up to donate in January. Yay!

And then Sue said, “Have you got any friends that you can take along?”. So Dan (being one of those inspirational type people – have a look at his blog for his amazing fundraising efforts) is now rallying friends, family and strangers on Twitter to join him donating. Yay!

And then I said, “I wonder how many Janathon (or Jantastic) people we could persuade to part with a pint?”, Sue declared this to be great challenge and JogBlog said yes we could hijack Janathon to encourage people to do a tiny but amazing thing by giving blood. Yay!

Why is giving blood important? Well, the bare fact is that hospitals need 8000 units of blood a day and while the Blood Service takes 2.1 million donations from about 1.6 million donors, that’s only 4% of the population, giving two or three times a year. Blood stocks are particularly low over the festive season (particularly for blood types O- and B-) and the Blood Service is predicting that 2012 will see an even higher demand for blood than normal. If you have a look at @GiveBloodNHS on Twitter or the amazing stories on the Blood Service website, you’ll get a much better idea of why people donate and why it’s so important.

I’m lucky enough not to have a story for why I donate – I donate because I can. I’m fit and healthy, it doesn’t take long, it really doesn’t hurt and I can (and do) eat three custard creams guilt-free after I donate.

Dan will be donating on January 2nd. I will be donating on January 31st. It would be amazing if other Janathoners (there’s going to be at least 150 more of you out there) could donate (or if you can’t donate, encourage someone you know to donate) sometime between Dan and me.

It’s dead easy – visit www.blood.co.uk or ring the nice blood people on 0300 123 23 23 to find your local session and book an appointment. If you’re not sure if you can give blood, give them a ring.

When you’ve got your date, leave a comment below so we know who’s given up an armful and I’ll even see if we can rustle up a prize as even more of a bonus than just the warm glow of doing something good.

In which I have a go with two new bits of kit and also don’t fall over

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I started this post last week, but then Christmas intervened and it went into the folder of forgotten drafts. If I’m honest, in our house Christmas has actually got in the way of Christmas at times – my Christmas cake remains naked and the marzipan and icing remain unopened… ah well.

Anyway, the events of this post took place on December 18th.

On Sunday, I was giddy with the excitement of being able to run in daylight (it’s the small things that matter most) and settled on a precise distance of ‘somewhere between six and nine miles’. It was both bloomin’ freezing and slippy out there after a flurry of snow, so I decided to be turn the threats of personal injury and general mardiness into the opportunity of trying out new gizmos.

Firstly, my eGloves – after I was sent these, the weather became unseasonably warm and I hadn’t had a good opportunity to try them out. Since then, the temperature has dropped (anyone would think that it’s winter) and I’ve worn them purely for the simple function of keeping my hands warm. For the majority of the time, I have incredibly cold hands (good for making pastry, less good for making friends) and so far, the gloves have kept them toasty. My worry was that they might keep my hands too warm while running as this is the only time that my hands defrost somewhat. In fact, they kept me at a perfect temperature until I had about a mile to go and then I tucked them in the waistband of my tights until I got home.

Clearly keeping hands warm is the primary objective for most gloves, but the e-glove has some nifty science bits (apologies if this is too technical) on the fingertips, which allow you to paw at your smartphone and stay warm in all weathers. I don’t usually run with my iPhone,being somewhat accident-prone I can’t help thinking that it would all end in tears. However, I was running alone, Ginge was at work, it was icy underfoot and if I was going to fall on my arse, I wanted to be able to summon help.

Luckily, I had recently acquired an armband for my phone and this seemed the ideal opportunity to give it a whirl. My first challenge was to get the phone into its little neoprene papoose. I failed this challenge on the first attempt. Being somewhat accident-prone, I have a robust rubbery bumper on my phone which takes the sleek, iconic piece of design that Apple intended and turns it into something from the Fisher Price range. Only after I had tried to stuff the phone and its bumper into the case, only after I had sworn a bit, only after I had declared it to be a flawed design, did I realise that the problem was user error. I removed the bumper and it fitted in neatly…

It took a bit of fettling to get the armband securely velcroed onto my arm (turns out that they’re not as big as I think) and I suspect that I’ll need a bit of practice to be able to use my phone effectively while it’s on my arm. Having said that, the eGloves worked really well through the plastic screen and I was able to run to the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast, making me fitterer, strongerer and cleverer by the end of my run.

Oh and I ended up erring on the side of caution and only ran 6 miles. As home came into sight, the pavements became treacherous and I did a marvellous Bambi on ice impression but managed to stay on my feet. Result.

In which I ponder on the contents of my stocking

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A belated Happy Christmas to you all! I’m writing this on Boxing Day while Ginge assembles a cardboard model of the Empire State Building. I bought it for him, so I can’t even look upon the scene with a glint disapproval in my eye (although we’ve just had a narrow escape with some superglue…).

I hope you had all had a wonderful time and that Father Christmas brought you everything that you wished for. I had a total of zero running gifts (which is exactly the number that I asked for as my running drawer is permanently on the cusp of having to implement a “one in-one out” policy –  all I ever do to resolve this is squish things down a bit more). What the big beardy one did bring me was a copy of Dan Lepard’s latest book Short and Sweet. Edd Kimber’s The Boy Who Bakes and a rather nifty cake knife and slice set. In a slightly tangential way, this is all good running incentive as I may have to resort to marathon training to offset the calories of all the goodies that have already caught my eye.

I also received this:

"Onward + upward to Janathon" - thanks Mum...

It’s worrying how Janathon seeps into every nook and cranny of your life. Ah well. I suppose this means that it’s definitely time to dust off the old Rocher-o-Meter…

Just two more things…

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Firstly, I’ve been in yet another quandary about a race… I missed the opportunity to do an RNLI Reindeer Run because we were away and then last weekend I couldn’t do either the Preston or Liverpool Santa runs. So I sulked a for a bit. And then I got an email about the West Kirby Santa run. In two weeks time. Considering that apparently I was dead keen to do a race in a silly outfit and that £10 is a bargain for a race AND a Santa suit, I should be rushing out to post my application. I’m not. Ginge is at work that day and I can’t think of anyone else who would be willing to be dragged along. I asked on twitter, would I look like a tit doing a Santa dash on my own? I’m sure that this sort of race should be a fun, friendly, social kind of thing, whereas what I seem to be proposing is that I drive 40 miles, dress up as Santa on my own, run 5k(ish) on my own, and then drive 40 miles home (possibly still dressed as Santa) on my own.  I did have a brief flurry of excitement I might have some twitter company, but it turns out that I misread a tweet and the Santa posse led by Jo are actually running in Surrey… I suspect that running in a silly costume will have to wait for another day.

The other thing was that while I was distracted by trying to find that Nike advert yesterday, I stumbled on this one (initially via Marathon Sweetheart‘s blog) and I fell a little bit in love.

Click for bigger

I’m probably way behind everyone else on this one (the campaign was in 2005 – even if I had seen it in 2005, the only thing I could run then was a bath) but it’s the first time I’ve seen them (there’s a whole series of body parts) and that one sums things up for me. I then got distracted by looking at the current Nike Women US campaign “Make yourself…”. It’s all a fabulous celebration of female athletes and was a welcome distraction in a fortnight of the Sports Personality of the Year debacle and Liz Jones’ guff in the Daily Mail (that  doesn’t link to her column, it goes to the Athletics Weekly blog as I couldn’t bring myself to link directly). On a similar note, Bangs And A Bun also had a bit of a twitter vent about the infuriating fact that when female athletes are interviewed by the mainstream press, they are always asked about what body part they aren’t happy with or thing would change about their appearance, rather than focussing on the fact that these athletes look fit and strong and, you know, athletic…

And speaking of fabulous female athletes, I was proper chuffed to see that JogBlog (Queen of the Athons and flapjack-devourer of this parish) has won a rather splendid competition to be adopted by SOLE and will receive £1500-worth of kit, nutrition and training support on her road to the London Marathon in April. Go JogBlog!

In which I ride my wave of enthusiasm and then get all panicky

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After all of the relaxation of the Conwy trip, we had a slightly faster paced break in New York (I know, NYC more lively than Conwy, who’d have thought?) and it left me full of enthusiasm and excitement for (a) Christmas and (b) doing stuff. I often get this after being away (or at work, after being on courses) and love the giddy energy that I have for new projects, until life gets in the way and everything drifts a bit. This time, I was reinvigorated about running after passing a Nike Women advert about not letting the weather beat you and stop you running (which I have since tried to find, but can’t – though this is the image on it).

That'll be me that will

“Yeah!” I thought “That’s the kind of runner I want to be”. Then I got back to the UK and it was cold and dark and raining and I didn’t run for 5 days.

Part of the reason that I didn’t run (aside from laziness and an aversion to the cold, dark and rain) is that my hip pain has come back a bit. I fully concede that this is my own fault for neglecting both my foam roller and therapeutic exercises. I tried to run on Saturday but it felt completely wrong, both physically and mentally, and I decided to devote Sunday to some serious rolling, leg waving and thera-banding instead.

On Monday I was faced with the choice of running early in the cold/dark/rain or running late in the cold/dark/rain. I opted for the early one (knowing I would be very short of time in the evening) and was rewarded with one of the worst night’s sleep that I’ve ever had. There is something soul destroying about still being awake at two in the morning, knowing that you can only have a maximum of three hours sleep before the alarm will sound for running. Needless to say, when the alarm did go off (after I had eventually drifted off only to be woken at three by the sound of hailstones the size of golfballs) I chose to ignore it and did some more hip therapy in the evening.

I finally ran this morning when I bounced out of bed at 5.30, was out of the door by 5.50, enjoyed my run, barely got rained on and managed a casual three miles (barely taking any notice of Miles) at under 10 minutes/mile, which I was incredibly pleased with. My pace has gone to pot since my hip started (back in June I was managing 9 minute miles) and that’s going to be one of the things that I inded to address over the next few weeks.

I am going to need some kind of focus because the wave of holiday enthusiasm also carried me to the realisation that if I want to do a spring half marathon, I will need to find one, enter it and train for it. I had a choice of three in the North West in March; Blackpool, Liverpool or Wilmslow. First to be discounted was Blackpool; I liked the 10k in Blackpool, but I’m not sure that I’d fancy doing twice the distance down the sea front in early March. The toss up between Liverpool or Wilmslow was put to Twitter, whereupon Twitter told me that they’re both good, flat, PB achieving races that I would definitely enjoy. From my own musing, I was concerned that I wouldn’t be posh enough for Wilmslow and that there wouldn’t be enough to occupy Ginge while I run round for a couple of hours, but I was still open to either of them.

Then I read the small print of Wilmslow’s information. My panic button had been triggered by the strapline “A race…not a run” on the bottom of the entry form and a bit more reading lead to the discovery that the course has a time limit of 2 hours 35 minutes. Now, I ran Folkestone in 2.33 with injury afflicted training and in stupidly hot conditions. I would hope (and expect) that I would finish under 2.30 next time. I was heartened by the confidence that other people have in my ability to run and enjoy this race. I was also intrigued by what happened to anyone still running after 2:35. Suggestions varied from disappointed head shaking by peers to being mown down by a combine harvester. Liverpool it is then.