Bollock Grabbing Inspiration!

8 weeks ago I couldn't run for more than 20 minutes without stopping, wheezing and feeling like I was going to pass out and yet this morning I managed to run 12k. I ran to Regents Park, past families, ducks, dogs playing with footballs, past the Zoo, the mosque, the BBC building (not in that order). Then I ran home. What a city.

I ran to my local coffee shop where a woman, who looked around 45, asked if I was training for something specific. Turns out she's about to turn sixty and started running five years ago when she found out she was going to be a grandmother (it was crisis inducing, apparently). 

She loved running so much she decided to run a marathon and loved that so much she ran another. Then she decided to compete in a triathlon (as you do in your late 50s when you've lived your entire life as a couch potato). Thing is, she couldn't ride a bike because she didn't have one as a child, so yep, you guessed it, she learned how to ride a bike and went on to compete in two triathlons and is doing her third in October. She's swam the River Thames, she learned how to ride a bike in her late fifties, she's a granny to three with another on the way!! Talk about grabbing life by the bollocks!!

She inspired me.
*grabs bollock*

January Blues

Went to the gym to do my "interval training" last night but could barely get through the door for the crowds!  Swarms of people buzzing on every treadmill, bike and weight machine as far as the eye could see.  Where had they come from and why had they all chosen 7pm to descend upon Fitness First, Queens Park?

AHHHH, tis January, the month of resolutions and WeightWatchers.  Starvation, juice fasts, no booze, no carbs, no fun.  Why, why WHY cram all this into possibly the most desolate month of the entire year.  What's wrong with cheerful July or happy April?  Or - weird concept - how about a wee bit of moderation the whole year round?

I joined the queue for the treadmill until I realised life was too short to freeze one's lycra clad butt off on a cold Tuesday night  so I went to the pub instead.  Incredible how warming wine is.

It's Thursday tomorrow and I haven't trained since Sunday so I'd better get my ass in gear, 15 weeks and counting.

I feel a bit stressed.  Oh wait, where there's Matches Fashion there is hope. Ahhh, that's better.

Jogging on. Well, about to eat a bar of Green and Blacks, actually.

We all got ill and my running was a bit lame but then I started again and....

Christmas, what an inconvienent time to marathon train - all that food, booze, bugs from the kids, it's a miracle I managed to get out of bed never mind go for a run.  But I did.  And I ran very, very slowly around the park for 30 minutes four times a week as per the instructions in my 1990s running book.

Then I got ill and it was Christmas day and I stopped running.  Then I started again but only because the boyfriend bought me a really fancy NIKE running watch with GPS thingy and some very cool neon pink compression socks from LA that go right up to the knee.  I look like a fashion Jimmy Krankie.   Running with the watch I could figure finally out distance (um, I never got into the map thing), and low and behold, when the damn thing finally picked up a signal,  I realised I'd run 3 miles in 30 minutes.  Not bad I thought, not bad at all.

The watch only worked once.

Then it broke and wouldn't pick up the satellite signal.  Fuming I Tweeted Nike with Tom Tom in copy and apparently - even though it's a brand new watch - I have to update the software.  I told the boyfriend who reckons technology is a conspiring against me.  Oh not again.

I tried the watch again and again but it never picked up signal after that one wear so I've invested in a Garmin watch that's absolutely brilliant and so easy to read.

So anyway, back to the running, I'm not sure how this happened, but all those 30 minute runs over the past few weeks have paid off because today I ran 6 miles without a break - SIX MILES. 6!?!?!

Must be the LA compression socks or possibly the cool watch.  Must be.

Go For A Run Or Drink Wine

It's Sunday and according to my "running schedule", aka a book written in the mid-nineties I bought off Amazon five mins after Googling "marathon / running / absolute beginners", I'm supposed to go for a run today.  I didn't, I opened a bottle of red wine instead.

The book was written pre-apps, pre-running mileage watches, pre-fancy footwear, GPS, pedometers, calorie counters, heart rate monitors, and it was only when the author suggested 'mapping your running route on a map' I realised when it was written!  A map?  Is it 1814?

Fook it,  I like my book, I like the fact it insists I need only run four times a year, whoops, I mean week, as opposed five (Runners World it aint).  I like the fact there's no mention of times and 'personal bests' or PB's, as they're known (amazing I know this already).  I love the fact my ancient book promises only one thing: I will finish the marathon be it in 10 hours or 15, whether I crawl or am rolled over the finish line by a kind volunteer, it will happen, a fact that's good enough for me.

It's December, I was supposed to run today but I chose to drink wine instead.  As you can tell, training is going ever so well.  In other news, I've found an amazing mileage running watch with built in GPS, pedometer, calorie counter and heart monitor.  Now that's what I call multitasking fashion.

Jogging on....

What Would Patsy Do...

Would Patsy Stone ever consider running 26.2 miles?  Would Patsy Stone commence training for said 26.2 miles on a freezing cold December morning?  Would Patsy Stone wear an ancient bright pink NIKE shell top she found at the bottom of her "inactivity drawer"?  Nah, doubt it, she'd run a mile to the nearest private members club in stack-heel Pradas...

*The heavy bit*

After witnessing my grandmother's slow demise to dementia and subsequent death in March, after carrying her coffin into the crematorium with my brother and cousin, I (finally) realised life should be grabbed by the bollocks while one has full use of mind, limbs and hair (I knew my grandmother had lost her battle with Dementia when the nursing home hairdresser cut her locks into a traditional 'granny cut').  My grandmother never sported a granny-cut, nay, she was all Farrah Fawcett blonde swished fringe, pink lippy and a cape.  She loved a flouncy cape.

*The crazy bit*

Shortly after the funeral I decided to take a firm grip of the ball sack of life and thought, ' I'm going to run the fooking marathon'.  I didn't say fooking, but you know... Anyway, next I did what I always do when I don't know how to do something; I bought a book on marathon running.

*The lazy bit*

I spent a month reading about marathon running (in bed) but couldn't be arsed to go for an actual run.  Far too cold.

*The scary bit* 

Then my friend, Kate Spicer, Mencap fundraiser extraordinaire, emailed to confirm I had AN ACTUAL MARATHON PLACE running for Mencap.

What would do Patsy do?   She'd go shopping.  So I did.  Can't believe how many lovely trainers there are out there.