A proper Aunty, not just a friend of your mum’s

Leave a comment

Yet again my weekend plans went slightly awry!

I’d planned a long(ish) run on Saturday and was going to go somewhere a bit more interesting than round the village. At eight in the morning, I was woken by my phone ringing with the news that my sister had gone into labour two weeks early. When I’d finished shrieking excitedly, I was sent out for a run by a husband who wanted an hour’s peace and quiet (he knows me well enough to realise that I would have just bounced on the bed until the next update). My phone crammed in the key pocket of my tights (just in case), I set off at a very bouncy but ridiculous pace. Far too fast for a long run, so I ended up doing two and a half miles then turning round and run-walking/slow pace running back. I’m not sure what the official name is for this type of training, so I’ll settle on “crap attention span”. I also had problems with my achilles/medial calf, which is probably down to me never wearing the orthotics that I’m supposed to wear and the fact that I need new trainers.

What I learned from this is that I can (and should) go a bit faster, especially when I’m out on my own and not distracted by nattering.  And that I shouldn’t try to do long runs when I’m excitable.

My niece was born at Saturday lunchtime – she is incredibly gorgeous and I’m completely in love.

First soup of Autumn

2 Comments

Crikey heck it’s wet up North. I’m seriously considering a second career as an ark builder and have started wearing my arm bands when I nip out to the shop. Although we’re not as bad as the Isle of Skye, it’s been somewhat damp this week. I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone, but it was as if someone had flicked a switch on Monday night and turned everything from summer to autumn. I’m a great believe that times and dates are tied into our memories, experiences and beliefs about the world, and that this can manifest itself in how we feel and behave. Maybe it’s too many years in education, but even at 30 I can’t shake off that back to school feeling in September – it makes me incredibly reflective (perhaps more so than New Year, which I just can’t be arsed with) and sometimes a bit gloomy.

To counteract the gloominess, I’m doing a bit of looking on the bright side.

  • Next week it’s exactly a year since I started this running lark and struggled to do my impression of running for even a minute.
  • I’ve talked a colleague into joining the same beginners group that got me started
  • I’m the only person from that beginners group who’s still going to the club (even on my irregular basis)
  • Even though the weather’s a bit ropey, I’ll soon have frosty runs along the canal to look forward to- that means Sunday mornings that smell of bacon, cold and wood burning stoves on the barges
  • It’s Scarecrow Festival in the next village this weekend!
  • I can start making soup again – I refuse to make soup in summer and have already broken my soupfast with a lovely carrot and coriander effort
  • I’ve got two nearly completed knitting projects which means I can start knitting tiny Innocent hats very very soon

Also, it’s the weekend. Which is nice.

In other news, I’ve continued to be a bit crap this week. I’d love to blame the gloominess for my lack of motivation, but I suspect that it’s just that it took my aged carcass three days to recover from Wembley this year. I did however do 4 miles on Thursday and have a long run planned tomorrow and I’m helping out at a 5k on Sunday, which hopefully will motivate rather than drown me.

Wem-ber-ley, Wem-ber-ley….

2 Comments

Hurrah! Another non-running post. Excuses go:
Wednesday: Waking to rain lashing against window, not condusive to early morning run. Also fell asleep at kitchen table while reading the paper – I felt that this suggested a certain level of tiredness.
Thursday: Made the mistake of going to my mum’s to get changed. Got caught up in the loveliness of having a chat in the kitchen.
Friday-Sunday: Set off for Wembley at 8 o’clock. First beer opened at approximately 9 o’clock. Alternately drunk and hungover for much of the weekend.
Monday: I’m optimistic for later on, but am still feeling the effects of Friday-Sunday.

Basically, I went down to Wembley for the rugby league Challenge Cup Final. We do it as an annual trip and it’s an amazing weekend that is usually fuelled by quite a lot of beer. This year, I had the lovely idea that I could take my running kit, take it easy on the Friday night and go out for a restorative plod on the Saturday morning. I love the idea of running in London (or any city). Whenever I see city runners, especially at lunchtimes, I get running envy and start to whip up fantasies of how, if I had a proper job with a proper lunch hour (instead of 30 minutes eating at my desk followed by 10 minutes trying to shake couscous out of my keyboard), I would be one of those runners. I would also be thinner, less red-faced and have a perky ponytail that bounced as I bounded through the streets. My plan for the weekend was scuppered by the fact that we were staying quite a way out of central London and also that twelve years of experience have taught me that this isn’t the weekend to try and run.

As it was, I was rough as a badger’s arse on Saturday morning, much to the amusement of my husband. He had to endure me whimpering gently as I complained that it was far too hot, my head hurt and I really didn’t want to put clothes on. It took me approximately 45 minutes to get dressed. I was a pitiful sight. I’ll not go into detail about what put me right as it was quite unpleasant, but the end result was that I perked up and set off for London Village for a lovely breakfast and a bit of culture visiting the BP exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, of which I think this was my favourite.

It’s lucky that I had a spare week in my training plan, as I’m now a week behind (oops). I’ve also found out that the day that I’d planned for my race is the day after a charity do to raise money for Help For Heroes and Myeloma UK (and to raise sponsorship for a Myeloma UK place in the London Marathon). This poses the dilemma of do I do the race, stay sober and have an early night (bearing in mind that I have the breaking strain of a kitkat)? Find another race (which I’m finding a bit tricky as I’m running out of races)? Or admit defeat and weasel out of it til next year (and crown myself Queen of the Weasels)? Answers on a postcard please.

EDIT: I’ve been thinking about this and have realised that I’m absolutely petrified about doing a race as they’ll all be full of proper runners and I’ll be at the back.

Is someone stealing time from me? Eh? Eh?

Leave a comment

When I decided to have a go at following a proper training plan, I looked at the schedule and marvelled at how little 3 days a week looked. In reality, I’ve not dragged out my sorry arse since Wednesday morning. And I appear to be prioritising the easy weekend runs, whilst neglecting the interval sessions, I can’t imagine why…

It’s tricky trying to do different stuff (especially when you’re a wuss like me) when you’re running with company. My friend’s still a bit demotivated on the running front and wasn’t keen to get dragged into a 5miler with fast bits in the middle – I got into enough trouble when we reached my front door only for me to announce “well we’re nearly at 3.7 miles, so we might as well make it 4…”.

My note to self from today was “turn off the garmin’s autonag setting when out with other people” – I don’t think it helped the demotivated friend to be harrangued by what sounds like an angry doorbell whenever we slowed down.

Inner pace

Leave a comment

God my posts are whingey some days – I can only apologise.

Since deciding that 10k is far preferable to 13.1 miles (how did I not realise earlier?), I have acquired a lovely 8 week training programme from Runners World and, for the first time ever, have 9 weeks to complete it in. Normally if I decide to do something like this, I usually mistime it by a couple of weeks so that I have to squeeze 8 weeks into 6… I’ve tweaked things around a bit in the first week so that the sessions fit better with my week (although I stuck hard and fast to day one being a rest day) and have figured out how to put intervals and workouts into my garmin.

Unfortunately, I haven’t quite got the knack of simple garmin things, like when can you set off if it seems like it’s never going to find its satellites or if you start off inside. Due to my thickery, I set off on Tuesday’s group run (when knowing the distance would have been fab) with the damn thing bleeping at me and telling me I was auto paused (I wasn’t going that slowly…). I didn’t have high hopes for the session as I was asleep 15 minutes before I needed to set off and was a bit flat after a crap day at work. Of course, I had a good run and really enjoyed myself. The only downside was that our route took us by my office, but in the spirit of mindfulness I noticed that there’s a cornfield a couple of streets up from the industrial estate where I work. I was far more excited by this than I should have been. Plan said easy 2-3 miles, ended up about 4.5miles and a bit more effort than I intended because I was talking to someone who is naturally faster and fitter than me.

This morning’s run was supposed to be 2 easy miles and 2 fast miles. I’m still struggling a bit with the easy pace and end up going at my normal pace and then trying to speed up too much. This meant that I went a bit hopeless and kept giving in and walking, some of this was in my head, but I think the  slightly harder than planned session less that 12 hours before didn’t help either. The upshot of this is that my average speed on the fast half of the run actually ended up slower than my easy speed. I’ll get the hang of it eventually, but in the mean time I’m planning to do a short timed session ignoring distance and pace so that I don’t start getting too stressy about it.

Good things from this morning’s run:
Seeing people that I routinely pass on my drive to work (I love late starts)
Being passed by 2 of our neighbours, which made me quite smug
Seeing a sheep wake up – it kind of unfolded its legs and leaned up on a sheepy elbow, peering at me in a curious and sleepy.