In which I refuse to accept that it’s nearly Janathon time again.

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Today I was alarmed to see that Cathy had opened the scary door marked Janathon already.

Am I joining in this year? Of course I am. I’m too scared of Cathy to say no. No, it’s not just that; in a perverse way I do enjoy the Athons. I like the single-minded, focused determination that I apply to them (especially when it’s sadly lacking for the other ten months of the year), the feeling that if I can do this then I can do this I can do anything, but probably most of all, I adore the warm fuzzy camaraderie on the blogs and twitter (where the fine line of encouragement and nagging is trod daily).

Of course, I have a decision to mull over – how do I tackle Janathon this year? This will be my fourth Athon (see to your right >>> for the accounts of those) and three of them have been 100% running (and blogging) successes. At the moment my heart is saying, “go on, run every day – you know you can do it, you’ve done it before…”. In the opposite corner is my head saying “yes, you know you can do it, you have nothing to prove and you don’t want to aggravate your hip by running every day you idiot”.

The problem is, while I know my head is right, I mainly only like running and I don’t really want to do anything else. I especially don’t want to do anything else in the month that everyone has decided to do something else as well. I do have a bit of a plan though, it just needs a bit more working out on the logistical side.

PS Had 3 good runs last week – a better than expected pace early Tuesday, a not getting blown away in the gales reluctant (but ultimately enjoyable) after work on Thursday (it was cold, I wore my full length black tights, black jacket and black eGloves and enjoyed feeling like I was a sinister criminal mastermind off to do a diamond heist. And then I put my hi-vis on…) and an intended 6 miles that turned into 8 in the brief spell without rain on Sunday afternoon. Very pleased.

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.

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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).

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“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.

In which we storm a castle before breakfast

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After my Friday learning stuff at Liverpool Uni, Ginge retrieved me from Kirkby station and we ventured down the motorway to Wales. We’re staying in Conwy for a couple of nights and Ginge very kindly offered to accompany me on an adventure run around the town.

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Our room is on the top floor of the hotel and Miles seem to appreciate being nearer to the sky so he can find those pesky satellites.

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I seem to be drawn to running near water – seafront, canals, rivers, wherever. Now, I’d love to claim there’s some deep psychological or meditative reason for this (though generally it does make me feel happy), but it’s mainly the simple fact that watery places tend to be flatter. Whilst Conwy does have enough water to warrant having a lifeboat, it’s also in Wales. Ergo there are hills. That’s not what I signed up for.

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Up and up the town walls we climbed…

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Up and up the stone steps, round and round the spiral staircases, until we were the kings of the castle.

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Working our way back down the uneven, slightly slippery stairways involved a little more caution (and downright girliness from me at times). Then it was through town, onto the quayside, back through the woods and up some more hills before returning to the hotel for a lovely breakfast.

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UPDATED – for Adele, yes we did see the smallest house!

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4 of 4

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Running four times in a week should not make me as unfeasibly proud as I seem to be this morning. However, as it’s the first time in ages that I’ve managed it, you’ll have to let me have this one.

After the weekend’s autumnal runs, it was a return to darkness for the midweek ones. Tuesday’s intention was a 7 miler with Ginge after work. I am contractually obliged to try to weasel out of after work runs (the conversation tends to go something like “so we’re doing four miles tonight then?” “seven” “that’s three you say?” “seven” until one of us gets bored) and (even though I was actually looking forward to it) I duly obliged before getting changed. In the meantime it turned out tharp Miles had gone into hiding and it took twenty minutes of frantic hunting before he turned up in the pocket of my good winter coat (I still have no idea why), so we didn’t actually need my extra avoidance techniques.

After a mile or so, I looked at Ginge, Ginge looked at me and we realised that neither of us really wanted to do 7 miles in the dark and wet. We completely changed tweaked our route and diverted through the village. As we ran down a steep hill in the pitch black (both of us convinced that it had streetlights), Ginge remarked that the rain seemed wetter in the dark. When we returned to the lit path, we realised that the rain seemed wetter because it was wetter. With a mile to go, it was chucking down and we arrived home quite relieved that we’d adjusted our plans.

To reach my planned 4/4, Thursday morning was going to have to be an early morning one. I know I can do them, ultimately I enjoy them, but I hate the thought of them. Going to bed early would probably help, and yet at midnight I was still up (watching Batman of all things). I wasn’t optimistic for the next day. Normally, I wake up at 5.25, 5 minutes before the alarm goes off, and sure enough, I woke up before the alarm went off. Unfortunately it was half past two. And then four o’clock. And eventually 5.25.

I was dressed and ready for action in a record ten minutes. Unfortunately, once again, Miles had other ideas. Low battery and the presence of clouds caused us to go through the rigmarole of “are we indoors?” while he tried to locate his satellites. And then it started raining. Five minutes later I was cursing Miles for holding me up. Ten minutes later I was thanking miles for holding me as, in the time it took him to behave, the rain had stopped. I did my three miles and went home to read about the perfect porridge whilst eating my imperfect but very welcome bowl-full.

So that’s my week’s plan stuck to and completed. Tomorrow I will be running by the Welsh seaside and right now, this post is being brought to you from a a bench in Liverpool courtesy of my eGloves.

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