A busy month!!

The sun is shining as I write this, it is Friday evening, there is a sleepy dog curled up next to me, there is Prosecco in my future, and life is good.

I felt compelled to research what better writers than me have said about the month of May - my favourite quote is from Fennel Hudson:

“May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel alive.”

Feeling alive sounds pretty good to me.  Much better than the alternative.

So, enough of the musing, I am sure you want to know how I got on in the wonderful month of May??

This month’s report card:

Weight loss: 0 (more about that later)

Weekends in Prague: 1

Trdelnik with ice cream - so naughty but so good!!

Birthdays: 1

10k races completed: 3!!

Minutes improvement in 10k race time: 1

In my last blog I mentioned my goal of completing one 10k per month in 2019.  But recently I thought, why stop at one??  Why not do a 10k as often as possible/practical??  Surely doing three a month will be better than doing one a month - well, we shall see!!

The benefits of my new obsession with entering 10ks is firstly that I am running a lot of 10ks, and secondly, there is so much bling!!  The downside is a reduction in lie in opportunities, but no pain no gain, right??

The three May races were:

Frimley 10k - 1 hour 13 - a bit of a slog and a not very exciting route.

Royal Berkshire 10k - 1 hour 14 - a great race.

We earned these ice creams!!

Vitality London 10,000 - 1 hour 10 (no walking) - a fantastic event, if you haven’t done it then you should!!  After all, if it is good enough for Mo then why not?!

So the running is going pretty well.  Although I do need to start pushing myself on parkruns as I did the first 5k of my last 10k faster than my usual parkrun pace which isn’t how it is supposed to be. (Since writing the above yesterday, I definitely did not push myself at Wimbledon Common parkrun this morning. 😳  Even "Mean Monica" nagging and pushing (actually pushing a couple of times) me all the way round didn't help.  In my defence, I refer you to the earlier plan to drink Prosecco and the fact that it was very hot!!)

But the weight loss is non existent (even, dare I say it, negative) so I need a new approach if I am going to beat my parkrun PB by next April.

With this in mind, I have signed up to a 21 day body blitz programme starting on 10 June.  It will be brutal but effective, and should help kick me out of my bad habits and towards some good ones.  I’ll let you know how it went next month but hope to report some significant progress at last.

Now I am off to enjoy the sunshine.

It is a marathon not a sprint!!

So, nearly four weeks have passed since my slog around Alice Holt which was the subject of my last blog.

Here is my progress report:

Weight loss: 0
Lake District holidays: 1
Easter eggs consumed: classified
10k races completed: 1
Minutes improvement in 10k race time: 5
Hamstring status: still irritatingly niggly

Starting with the highlights, on 14 April I ran (yes, I ran!!) the Bushy Spring 10k.  Not one step of walk and 5 minutes faster than my Alice Holt slog.  I must confess, knowing I was going to write this blog definitely helped me to resist the little (loud) voice in my head that kept suggesting how lovely it would be to walk for a little bit.  And it was all worth it because this was the medal!!

I do like my bling!!

I should perhaps mention that I have committed to completing one 10k race per month for the whole of 2019.

This is because the "race effect" allows me to silence or at least ignore the "why don't you walk" voice which accompanies me on all my runs.  One day I hope to be able to leave that voice at home, but that day is still some way off.


The next "official" 10k is the Vitality London 10,000 on 27 May so over four weeks to start whittling away at those kilograms!!

Now for the "could try harder" part of the report - yes, I know, no weight loss is not very impressive.  Although, with a Lake District holiday and Easter could I get some credit for no weight gain??  No, I thought not.

At least the holiday indulgence was somewhat mitigated by walking for three or four hours a day as well as running my favourite ever route, which goes from Chapel Stile to Skelwith Bridge and back.  If you ever find yourself in the Lake District with some running kit then do check it out - it is just over 7k and is stunningly beautiful.

I even got to run with (or at least past) some sheep!!

We left the swimming to our dog, Pristine, here she is enjoying her sploshing!!

Hopefully all the pretty pictures have distracted you from my lack of impressive progress.  On the plus side, my hamstring finally seems to be improving which means I can now run up hills without pain, and also that I can start doing a bit more running, which has got to be a good thing!!

I will leave you with a couple of inspirational quotes from my friend Monica:

"We are all happy to be lazy but let's not be lazy."
"Does anything actually hurt?  If not, push yourself!!"

We all need a friend like Monica!!

From a tortoise to a hare??

On Saturday I participated in Bolt Round The Holt, a 10k race in Alice Holt Forest.  I have to say “participated” as it would be technically inaccurate to say I ran it.  I ran a lot of it, but gosh it was so hard.  Whilst slogging my way round, I could not help but compare my experience to the London Winter Run on 3 February, also a 10k run but the experience could not have been more different.

So why was I able to run 10k in February whilst having a fantastic time, high fiving penguins and huskies, enjoying the atmosphere and grinning away, then two months later feel like my legs were made of lead??

Well, first, Alice Holt has hills, lots of them.  And it was hot, about 10 degrees hotter than I have been used to in recent weeks.  And I have had a hamstring injury so have lost a bit of fitness.  And there were no penguins or huskies …

But really the cause of the extra 13 minutes (yes, I know, that is a lot of minutes) became obvious when I stepped on the scales the next morning and spotted that somehow I weighed 3.5kg more on Saturday than when I skipped round the Winter Run without a care in the world (well, maybe not skipped exactly).

How did that happen??  I could blame my friends for getting married in March, meaning I had to eat and drink too much at the hen do and at the wedding itself (yes, I know, I didn’t actually have to).  Then there was the night in a hotel to celebrate mine and my partner Rob’s seventh anniversary (those who know us are aware we will celebrate practically anything).  I also had to reduce my running due to the aforementioned dodgy hamstring.  But really, I just ate too much.  And drank too much.  There are no excuses.

Sadly this is the theme of my running life since I started four years ago.  I have plotted my parkrun times against my weight and the correlation is notable.  I am currently around four minutes away from my parkrun PB and also around 13kg heavier than when I achieved said PB.  That is probably not a coincidence!!

So one thing is clear.  If I want to get better at running – and I really do!! – I need to get lighter.  At least 13kg lighter and ideally even lighter than that.  I have known this for a long time but Saturday’s race really brought it home to me.

Hence this blog.  I am putting it out there that I intend to beat my parkrun PB (a currently unbelievable 28:13) within the next 12 months.  This is an achievable goal but it is going to require some changes.

Thanks to those of you who have made it this far through my first blog post.  I plan to use this blog as a record of my progress and to help to keep me on track as I make the transition from a tortoise to a hare.  Maybe I will even inspire someone to make some changes for themselves, or at least make you laugh or smile along the way.