The one good thing about being injured is that it took the pressure off me for this weekend. That probably sounds daft (especially as the only person putting any pressure on me was, well, me) but it’s true. Even if I had remained uninjured and non-snuffly, stuck rigidly to my training plan, eaten well, done injury prevention exercises that I didn’t even know existed and conducted all the appropriate sacrifices to the running gods, I would have felt that I hadn’t trained properly. And if I haven’t trained properly, what’s the point in even entering the race?

Instead, I know I haven’t trained properly. It’s not my fault. On the day, I can only do what I can do. And, no matter what happens, as long as I finish it will be a personal best.

Well that was my attitude until Sunday. Maybe it was being 7 days off, maybe it was the fact that I had my first anxiety dream (I got distracted from the route to go and help someone with something, but when I tried to catch up with everyone I had to take short cuts and then I was going the wrong way), maybe it was the falling over followed by a really hard 11.5 miles, whatever it was it sapped my positivity.

What the hell was I thinking entering a half? What the hell was I thinking entering a half 300 miles from home? It started with self doubt. The self doubt grew into a dark cloud that hovered over me. By Wednesday evening (when twitter people may have noticed a certain degree of “meh” from me, @jogblog and @helsieboo), I went to yoga and needed a little time out to deal with some optical leakage when I went awry in a simple posture (I don’t think anyone noticed, so I can still show my face next week). Luckily, some cathartic shoulder stands did the trick and I left in a far more positive frame of mind than I arrived.

It also helped that I’ve had some lovely confidence boosting messages from my sister, tweets from @AdelePrince, @jogblog and @OnesizePlanet, and of course the ongoing support and encouragement of Ginge. You’re all ace.

On that note, I’m on with writing comprehensive To Do and Don’t Forget lists (starting with TRAINERS and RACE NUMBER) and am embracing carb loading with an unsettling zeal.

PS. Bollocks to meh and self-doubt – bring on The Hill!

No running this week due to being floored by a chesty coughy cold thing that on Monday saw me go home early from work and fall into a deep, deep sleep. In the absence of any kind of athletic effort, I’m going to sneak in one of my woolly posts (well it has been Wool Week this week).

One of my birthday presents from Ginge was a day course learning how to dye yarn at Purl City Yarns in Manchester (a gorgeous place that could bankrupt me within ten minutes of crossing the threshold) and on Saturday, the time came for me to venture off to the big city. My bag packed with essentials (cash, phone, Shuffle, travelling sock knitting – it’s travelled miles, I’ve knitted mere centimetres), I caught the train and landed with enough time to have a quick (and restrained) explore of Fred Aldous and a brew at the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. At eleven I presented myself at Purl City with a nervous enquiry of “Dying?” and the eight of us trooped off upstairs to start the day.

The course was taught by Debbie Tomkies of DT Craft and Design and covered the basics of dying yarn with Procion dyes. Debbie is incredibly knowledgable and brought a gorgeous array of samples and patterns for our inspiration. The morning was spent getting to grips with the effects of changing the concentration of dye and mixing the ratios of different colours in order to make a sample card.

Over lunch, we compared knitting habits (in both senses of the words; there was certainly a degree of enabling going on when we got back to the shop – “it’s only one ball, it won’t hurt….”), learnt about fascinating techniques and skills that were unknown to some of us (knitting socks on two circular needles, knitting from sock blanks, magic loop, spinning) and developed a slight sense of inferiority about our (my) knitting (the project lists went something like, socks, socks, lace, cloth nappy covers, baby clothes, um random things for people). It was lovely to meet other knitters, share the enthusiasm and learn stuff.

In the afternoon it was time to get our hands on our own projects and have a play with different techniques; mixing colours, dipping, painting or randomly squirting. The first two attempts were on 50g skeins of 4ply pure wool and then onto a final project with a yarn of our choosing (I went for a 4 ply alpaca/acrylic blend – I’m drawn to lighter weight yarns despite not really knowing what to do with them).

My first attempt took the random approach of twirling my yarn and then squirting dye across it willynilly. I found myself using the same autumnal/earthy colours that I always use on these courses and eventually produced something that looked as if I could flog it to the Army to use as camouflage.

I was a little more brave on my second skein, sponging wide bright  and paler pink stripes and interspersing these with thinner stripes of purple.

For the final project, I decided to do a gradiated colour change from pink to orange. I blended the colours to start with (90% scarlet/10% orange; 50% scarlet/50% orange; 10% scarlet/90% orange), but with hindsight it might have been more striking to use 100% of the colours at each end.

After the yarn is dyed, it goes in the microwave to fix the colour, then is cooled, rinsed and dried.

One of the lovely things about taking a course like this is that even if you’re disappointed with your end results, other people can always see something special about the work that  you’ve done and it makes you look at it with fresh eyes. At the end of the day, I invested in one or two items from the shop and returned home with three bags of slightly damp yarn, which were then hung up over the bath. They now look like this – I’m really pleased with them (if nothing else, it proves that wool always looks nicer in a skein) but have no idea what to knit them up into.

Incidentally, I’m not worried about the lack of serious projects in my knitting box – in part because of words of wisdom from my mum who said “remain true to what you know and love”, which I reckon is good advice for more than just wool.

 

Whenever I meet up with other runners and we talk about racing, I just shuffle my feet and look apologetic. I don’t really race. I’ve done one race (the Liverpool Women’s 10k last year) in three years of regular running. I love the idea of racing, but then I overthink things and somehow, eventually, I don’t bother to enter.

When my training plan said to do a 10k a few weeks before the half, I thought that this was the perfect time to face my fears. I consulted the race calendars and found the Blackpool Illuminations 10k on September 3rd and the Salford 10k on September 4th. I ummed and ahhhed about which to do; the Salford 10k people were very enthusiastic on Twitter, but Blackpool seemed more appropriate training for Folkestone (by being by the seaside rather than having a bloody great hill like what’s at the end of Folkestone…). My decision was made by receiving an invitation to a surprise social, ahem, “hydration session” for a friend’s 50th on the Saturday night – experience has taught me that this will rule out anything energetic until at least Sunday afternoon.

I have plenty of pre and post run habits and rituals, but race day is a mystery to me. We arrived in plenty of time, collected my number from race HQ and took advantage of the nice toilet facilities provided by the Hilton. It appears that a large part of my pre-race routine involves an argument between my brain and my bladder; my bladder says “you need a wee”, my brain says “you’ve just had one” and my bladder counters with “yes, but maybe you need another one. What if you get desperate halfway round…”. Other, more experienced runners did their stretches, bounces, warm up jogs and that funny side to side running thing that probably has a name. I paced back and forth along the front with Ginge staring at all of the other, more experienced runners.

Time passed very quickly and soon we were lining up at the start. I shuffled towards the back of the pack and tried not to be intimidated by the men in tiny shorts, ladies in full make up and general gazelle-like manner of my co-runners. The gun sounded to a collective (and worryingly surprised sounding)  “oooooh” and off we went. My plan (if you can call it that) was to pace myself with Miles, but in a casual way so that I could feel comfy, enjoy the experience and not do myself any damage. That and not finish last.

The route took us out along the front towards Bispham through the illuminations (surprisingly, given the name of the race), past the hotel where we stay for our annual rugby do (very pleased to spot that we have Daleks and TARDISes outside it this year) and in between some of the tableaux (my favourite was a horror one which appeared to show Dracula holding Frankenstein’s monster in a headlock). As I was between miles two and three, the race leaders could be seen on the return half of the loop along the prom – even though it was clear that they were going twice as fast as me, I marvelled at how effortless they looked. Cheery marshalls and blasting wind welcomed us as we looped down onto the sea front. Water at mile three reminded me I need to work on my drinking technique (currently it goes gulp, swallow, gulp, choke, dribble).

I had spent the first half slowly but surely overtaking people with varying degrees of satisfaction (after a couple of miles, my race plan hadturned into “I don’t care what happens as long as I finish ahead of the man wearing the Hi-Tec Silver Shadows”). By the second half, my powers of overtaking had waned and I settled into a routine with a fluorescent-clad chap next to me. He walked, I bumbled past him, when I was a few feet past him he would run until he was a few feet past me and then walk again. Over and over again. Just after mile 5 he demonstrated impressive self-awareness, remarking “I must be really annoying…”. Yes, yes you are. He then proceeded to walk up the slope back onto the prom before speeding off, managing to complete the race without walking and finishing 13 seconds in front of me. Not that I’m bitter.

The section before looping back onto the prom gave runners a late bit of support for the final stretch and it was lovely to see Ginge lurking on the front before he scooted back up to meet me at the finish. I grinned and sped up as I approached him, before wheezing and slowing down as soon as I was out of sight…. The finish line in sight, I managed to find a bit extra in my legs and managed one final bit of overtaking. I thought that I was smiling as I finished, but the official photos appear to show a grimly determined speedwalker.

Considering that my training has been erratic at best and I’ve not really been doing any kind of speedwork for weeks, I was extremely chuffed with my time of 1:00:47 – a PB compared to my first race (where my chip time was 1:06:07) a year and a bit ago. As my giddiness wore off, the “what ifs” began and a hint of dissatisfaction started to creep into my mind – I suspect that this is one of the reasons that I don’t race. I know that it’s good to push yourself and try to improve  your time, but I need to learn to batter this down for at least half an hour after the race so that I can enjoy my success. I also need to practise not looking so daft on photos.

After some more careful rolling and a liberal amount of flailing my legs around in an uncoordinated fashion, I’ve felt brave enough to up my long run mileage and remind myself what it’s like to go a bit faster.

Thursday morning was supposed to see me bound out of bed and do a set of intervals. In fact, Thursday morning saw me peeling open one eye, peering at my alarm, pulling the duvet back over my head and swearing blind that I would go out on Friday. Not wanting to run on a Friday evening was incentive enough to haul me out of bed  for a quick set of Audiofuel Intervals. It’s been weeks since I’ve felt confident enough to do intervals and if nothing else, I was reassured to find that I haven’t lost my knack of timing my sprints to coincide with any available inclines on the route. I have lost a bit of speed, but it was nice to remind my legs that they can go faster (despite what my head keeps telling them) and just enjoy belting along the road.

The rest of the day was spent sulking that Ginge and I weren’t doing our annual pilgrimage to Wembley for the rugby league Challenge Cup Final. Never mind running, the usual agenda on an August bank holiday Friday involves opening the first beer as we get on the M6 (about 15 minutes after setting off. Just after breakfast). Be reassured to know that neither of us are driving at the time. This time last year I was half-heartedly increasing my mileage so that I could attempt a half marathon (can you spot a recurring theme here?). I had reached an extremely effortful ten miles before the wheels fell off my training (coincidentally this occurred at the same time as Wembley weekend. I can’t imagine why) and the volume of my half marathon talk fell to a whisper. Clearly I need peer pressure to keep me going.

Instead of cracking open a beer and being generally Northern and uncouth on the streets of London, Saturday saw me I rise bright and early, have my muesli, pull on my running kit and procrastinate. It was the Met Office’s fault. I checked their app at 7am and it showed rain throughout the day, but a fluffy white cloud over my running time. I checked their app again an hour later and it showed rain before my run, rain after my run and an orange cloud with a fork of lightning (and rain) during my run. So I rolled my leg, debated jacket or no jacket, shared my jacket or no jacket conundrum with twitter, filled my water bottle, put Miles out to get a signal, found my shuffle, found the right playlist, fettled about with my earphones, tied my jacket around my waist, moved things around the kitchen, left the house, returned to the house to get my water bottle and eventually put one foot in front of the other and set off with the plan of doing 11 miles. Gulp.

The first couple of miles were uneventful, then it rained a bit so the jacket went on, then it brightened up a bit so the jacket came off and I tried not to focus on the black clouds looming above the direction that I was running in. Or the fact that I was trying to run 11 miles. I distracted myself by trying to break down the mileage into fractions, realised that I have lost a lot of maths skills since my grade B GCSE and then distracted myself further by trying not being too distressed by the fact that I did my GCSEs 16 years ago. Then I reached mile four. (By now you should realise why I should run with either tunes or company). I hate mile four. I can run more than four miles and yet it brings a feeling of weariness and I start doubting myself. Luckily, I was able to distract myself with the fact that it started belting down with rain. The clouds were not orange and there was no lightning, but the heavens truly opened. By this point, the jacket was having little effect at waterproofing, but did make me look less of an arse (as if I had intended to be out in the deluge, rather than simply being caught out in it).

I adopted my policy of grinning like a loon and soldiered on. The rain continued and by mile eight I had to abandon my tunes because my ears were too wet for my earphones to stay in. Mile ten must have been where the delirium set in, because I found myself thinking “Well my legs don’t feel too bad, I’m soaked anyway, it’s not too far past home if I tacked another mile on…”. I reached mile eleven…and ran past my house. And kept running. And then turned round and ran home with a huge smile on my chops. Twelve miles. Twelve bloody miles.

September is proving a little on the busy side, so it’s nice to know that even if I don’t do another long long run, I’m fairly confident that I can do thirteen miles. The remaining 25 days before Folkestone will be spent alternately trying to figure out how fast I can go. And rolling my leg (because I’ve slacked off a bit this weekend, I’m getting cocky).