Mistake No 1

I didn’t take enough care of myself the day before. Throughout Saturday I scoffed crisps and chocolate in between doing housework and running errands instead of resting. Although I had a lovely Spag Bol at Alma’s (cooked by her hubby - it was delicious) the damage was already done. Then I sat up reading as I was so excited I couldn’t sleep, so ended up with about 5 hours sleep – my fault entirely.

Fix for London – Do bugger all the day before. Press gang hubby into role as skivvy and general dogsbody, eat lots of green stuff and fruit.

Mistake No 2

I only went to the loo once before the race, so I spent 6 miles needing to go. Unlike those lucky boys who can just run off somewhere and go (yes Madebyelves I’m talking about you) I had to queue for 4 minutes to use a portaloo at the start of mile 6, and because I didn’t want it t affect our time I sped up and mile 7 was completed in a very speedy 11.05m.

Fix for London – Squeeze lots out on the coach, then at the start get in the toilet qs and stay there until the off.

Mistake No 3

6 of my 1st 8 miles were under 11m 30 pace – this is a bit quick for me for a long run. Not only that but (despite when anyone else thinks) I found the undulating nature of miles 2 – 7 very draining on my legs. They weren’t obvious hills and to a seasoned runner they probably weren’t hills at all, but to me they were the worst kind – the sort of hill that you can’t power up and get over and done with because they go on too long.

Fix for London – Oh hell, I’m going to have to introduce a hill session into my week aren’t I? And work on my pacing…

Mistake No 4

I gave up on myself. Really, really gave up. At just after mile 9 I told Alma I was struggling and said she should go on – something in my voice must have struck home because thankfully she did and went on to get (what I think was) a PB of 2hr 29m. I forgot all of my mind tricks – the positive mantra, the happy feeling scenarios, reflecting on my past successes, and just went down into a very negative headspace. Just before mile 11 an apparition appeared before me in the form of Abradypus who had ‘popped over’ from Hove to cheer us on. I am embarrassed to say that I was walking when she saw me and I continued to walk for a good 2 or 3 minutes until she finally said, why don’t you just give it a go when you get to the 11m marker. So I did, and I could hear her clapping me all the way until I hit the main road again (thanks Louise x). My mum and her partner had come down from Essex to watch me and I knew they were somewhere around mile 12 so I carried on running as I didn’t want them to see me walking, seeing as they had travelled so far to support me. As it happened, they were only 100m from the end, so I ended up running the last 2 and a half miles, albeit slowly. I stopped for a Mum hug on the way (there is nothing quite like them even at 37), I really could have stopped right then and only her shouting at me to get on and finish it got me going again. At the finish line, I started sobbing (I was disappointed and very tired) and struggled to catch by breath for a few minutes. Alma stayed with me and was really great.

Fix for London – Reread all the mental training material in my guide. And make sure my Mum and Alma are within the last 100m at the Marathon.

So my adjusted chip time (after taking off the extra .32m the organisers kindly added to make this my longest run ever yippee!) was 2.37.32 and if you subtract the 4 minutes I spent in the toilet Q, it gives me a PB by 1 second. I know it’s not much but if I could have got a PB despite having what I thought was a terrible run, there is hope for me yet.

In summary, 13.5m long run done in 2hr 37m, training plan on track - whoop whoop!

All looking good for a PB on Sunday with Alma at the Brighton half…

Er, yeh, that was quickly forgotten about 100 yards in – running across foot deep snow on an uneven field is not the easiest thing in the world. I got fatigued really quickly and after 5 miles my legs felt like they’d done a half marathon so we cut the route short and headed back to the car park. With 7.5m in the bag 4 of the others decided to call it quits and finish their runs today, however as I have my lovely nephew (with my brother and sister in law tagging along!) coming for a visit today, I didn’t have that option, so I bullied persuaded Elaine to join me and we took a circuitous route home which bought my total mileage up to 11.2, bang on plan whoop whoop!

The other bonus of finishing the route on the road was that I had negative splits for the last 3 miles which I think is pretty impressive – look at the difference:

1.00mi 00:12:07

1.00mi 00:12:51

1.00mi 00:12:59

1.00mi 00:14:39

1.00mi 00:12:12

1.00mi 00:12:23

1.00mi 00:11:53

1.00mi 00:15:06

1.00mi 00:12:03

1.00mi 00:11:37

1.00mi 00:11:19

0.18mi 00:02:40

Last night was the Stopsley Striders annual awards ceremony. They have lots of awards  – best male, best female, newcomer awards, age grading, best cross country etc etc and they are across all age categories. They also give improvement awards to people they think have done particularly well over the last year. I went along to cheer along with everyone else and to get to see my running friends in normal clothes! We have some really talented runners – one of the ladies who  did last years marathon in 3h 6m! The last thing I was expecting was to hear my name called out but it was and I was so excited. Here’s what my certificate says:

“This lady had a very fine running year since she started in March in the Sandy 10. It was not just her first race of the year is was her first race ever! She ran very well after that, running PBs in every race until she was hit by an injury which set her back for a while. But fortunately she has a tough character and has bounced back and is now running very well again. She has run 5 PBs throughout the year and is a person who really seems to enjoy her running. Long may the good times continue for one of our Improvement Award Winners of 2011

 CARLA GREER”

I’m never going to win any races, so I think it is great that the club gives awards to people like me to recognise effort and hard work, even if I’m not actually winning anything for the club. The trouble is, now I am going to work even harder to make sure I get another one next year!!

Here are a couple of pics from yesterdays run, and one of the bling of course!

So this weeks running so far has been 2 boring treadmill runs, 3m on Monday at 8.7kph (about 11m mile) and todays 5m (1 hour) at about 8.4kph (about 11m 45s per mile). In all honestly, run no 3 will probably be 3m again Friday morning, followed up with an 11 mile (gulp) Saturday morning run which I will do outdoors (weather permitting).

Not sure how much more treadmill running I can do, it’s so booooooring but I suppose it’s better that than nothing.

In other news I was listening to the Marathon Talk podcast (Ep 108) on the train home from London on Friday evening, and 10 minutes in my name was read out as one of the spot prize winners for logging runs every week for Jantastic. Yipppeeeee! An Adidas hi tec hi vis super duper technical running jacket is on it’s way to me as we speak. Of course I shall devote a whole blog of pictures and review once I get it.

I love free stuff!

 to to do a new   with

a which we ran in just over 33 minutes. After that we met up with  and  to

which made a total of  for the day whoop whoop!

We met up with some ers, and the lovely  (think laterally!) gave me these  YUM!!!!!!

We then went to  and I ate  and drank

IT WAS BRILLIANT!

Now, I am here  with  watching .

Life is GOOD!

PS If Cassie ever offers you her home made flapjacks say yes, grab them, and RUN AWAY QUICKLY! They are the most amazing flapjacks I have ever tasted and you will not want to share. Trust me on this.

Hm.

I’m not sure I would let my friends bash my arse with a bat until it is so sore it hurts to sit down, nor would I let them squeeze me until I had no breath left and was panting even when standing still (although I’m sure a couple of them would jump at the chance to inflict that much pain on me…) however that’s what it felt like I let the hills do to me tonight. I did try singing this mantra:

I love hills, hills love me, I’m going to run up all the hills that I see

For about 27 seconds before I ran out of steam. It DID work for a bit so I will be trying it again in the future.

I’m looking forward to a bit more running this week. My plan is: speedwork tomorrow, a short club run Thursday, An Epic Adventure with Abradypus on Saturday followed by the Janathon meet up and then, what is quickly becoming my favourite part of the month, the Regents Park 10k followed by scrummy eggs on toast with Alma and a host of other blogging running buddies. I shall endeavour to blog after every run so you’ll be seeing a bit more of me than usual – oooh lucky you!

Todays Stats

Run 6.5m

V slowly!

5 steps later I realised running with a ruckscak is hard…10 steps later I was cursing my stupid decision to run with it – they really JIGGLE up down left right, I tried adjusting my gait to take it into account and ended up doing a sort of shufflle, hop, step, shuffle, hop, step that felt wierd but worked – it was pre 8am and I was not only out of bed but moving and that’s a plus in my book.

My you’ve been framed moment happened about 10 minutes in. I was going downhill so I sped up a little bit, after about 200 yds I heard a strange noise, I turned round to see my innocent vegpot (piri-piri – my favourite) splatted on the floor like some sort of wierd lunch road kill. I looked a little further up the road…there was something that looked suspiciously like one of my shoes…10 yards up from that…a pear…..20 yards further on another shoe…..10 yards on my scrumptious activia lemony creamy yoghurt pot smeared across the pavement…and running towards me holding my purse aloft was a lovely lady shouting EXCUSE ME YOU DROPPED THIS!!

Turns out in my early morning eagerness to get out of the house and get my miles in today, I forgot to zip my bag up and had left a little hansel and gretel trail…I was too embarrassed to go back looking for my knickers so I had to go commando at work today (don’t worry I had tights on!), oh the shame…

Coming back to training has been hard. I’ll be honest, much of my problem over the last 6 weeks has been mental, not physical. And I think the problem is the sheer weight of the task ahead of me. I had an 18 week schedule in place and it scared me to look at it because instead of focusing on my current week, I was always looking 5, 6, 12 or 13 weeks on and seeing these enormous distances in for the long runs, and just thinking SHIT, WTF was I thinking? I can’t do that, I’ll never run that far, I won’t be able to do that and well, you get the feeling. I got into a negative state of mind about the whole thing, and it started to permeate into all areas of my life. Everything started to seem like a mammoth task, a huge hassle and I worked myself up into this state of permanent stress and just felt rubbish.

I started to feel better after running 8 miles on Saturday morning, and I wanted to maintain the feeling, so I started to properly read the Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer that Shaz had sent me.

The 1st thing it was good for was settling my mind about where I am in my training – the book sets out a 16 week training programme, and today is the start of week 4 which calls for 4 runs: 3m, 5m, 3m and 8m. So, I went to running club tonight and did 4m and I ran the whole lot – BRILLIANT!

The 2nd, and probably most important thing I learnt (or rather, was reminded of) is the importance of a positive mental attitude. I’m sure at some point in our lives, we’ve all come across a sickly, american-type peddling of PMA – at work or maybe on course or in a book, and, in this cynical day and age, it is easy to dismiss it as an airy-fairy idea used by bosses with no original ideas and Californians. DON’T!! Each training week in the book has a whole chapter dedicated to it with physical and mental tips as well as the schedule. Here is the extract from the book that really made me think:

“Reality is not a ‘once and for all’ thing. It’s something that we constantly recreate through our beliefs and behaviours. Change your thoughts or actions and your change your reality. Think what that means…you are the architect of your life. You are the one who takes the raw materials and experiences and constructs the structure that is your life.”

This reminded me of Maggies brilliant post from last years Janathon about PRB , and now all of a sudden I feel like the marathon is doable again. I’m going to break it down into weeks, and just concentrate on what I have to do each week rather than what I’ll have to do in the future.

So THANK GOODNESS for Janathoners because without them I would have found PRB or the training book that has become my bible!

Well done to everyone that has maintined 23 days continuous exercise – you are all ROCKSTARS, and I look forward to seeing you at the post-Janathon pizza and beer meet up!

Last 3 weeks

Have generally been pretty rubbish training, eating and life wise, mostly down to my

State of Mind

Which has been extremely

Stressed

Due to a number of factors

Home - still no ceiling in the hallway and the leak hasn’t even been fixed yet, cleaner resigned, hubby not being v helpful, brakes on the car have gone, cats fighting constantly, one of them still injured and we’re January skint…

Work – start of a new year on the back of possibly our worst month ever in December has meant very close supervision and involvement (which I hate) from my boss who also happens to be my brother so…

Family – not really felt like talking to him outside of work which is rubbish as we’re really close and have always managed to leave work at work in the past, which has also meant I have not seen as much of my lovely nephew Ethan as I would like, but I have been to see my Nan and I have planned to see bro et famille in a couple of weeks so now I can worry about other things such as my …

Marathon training

Or more specifically the lack there of, which led me to wobble for a bit, but luckily help was at hand in the form of 4 people without whom I would have given up and deferred my marathon til next year:

Abradypus - for pacing me to a PB at the St Albans parkrun last week (2m 21 seconds just in case you haven’t read this post)

Alma - for pacing me roung the Regents Park half in my 2nd best 10k time and also my longest distance since coming back from my injury

Elaine – from my running club for being encouraging and nagging in equal parts and getting me out this morning for an 8m run which hurt, but I did it and now feel so much less stressed about everything, I can’t believe I had forgotten the healing power of running. Also, after reading the brilliant book my 4th support pillar,

Shaz, bought me way back when I got my marathon place (The nonrunners marathon training guide) in which the training programme calls for a 7 m long run this week which means I am exactly where their people normally are by this week and they get a 100% success rate of getting people round a marathon, I have decided I am going to do it and it doesn’t matter what time in, so now I am following this training schedule and I’ve de-complicated my life and my schedule by listing just the running and if I fancy going for a swim, or a cylce or doing some weights I can but if I don’t want to I don’t have to and I feel sooooooo much more relaxed about everything and I’m going to drink lots of some beer to celebrate.

Thanks for sticking with me!

Oh , and here is a pic of my new shoes as requested by Local Adventures (who wants to get in touch with his feminine side – Hmmm) and a couple of Oliver trying to eat hubbys roast dinner last week!