The holidays are over!

Merry/Happy etcetera, etcetera... 

Yes, I can believe it's 2016. No I haven't made any resolutions. Why? If you need to ask then you've clearly never made any. 

Have I been for a run this year yet? YES. Yes I have. Today. 

Ok, so it was the first time in about a month but please save your pointed disappointed stares, my aching legs and semi-burst lungs tomorrow morning will be punishment enough. Oh, and just in case you think it's not a sufficient punishment then you'll be happy to know I've signed myself up for a beginner's spin class too. The first lesson is this Thursday which will give me just enough time for walking to become bearable again. The almost certain leg agony aside, I am excited to be mixing things up with my training as I have to admit I was starting to get a tad bored of just running all the time and this will also be a good way to kick start this year.

Speaking of which, this year is actually going to be a pretty big one for me. 

2016 is the year in which I will be turning 25. I will be getting married and letting go of the only surname I have ever known. I'll be going on my honeymoon. I will be running a half marathon in February and hopefully take part in a mini triathlon in July. Last but not least I will be planning a potential trans-Atlantic move which is both terrifying and exciting and may not actually happen until 2017.

So, here's hoping this year goes well for me in all my endeavours and for you all in yours!

The end of a (tiny) era.

This Monday was my last run club lesson in South Oxhey. It feels like it was just yesterday that I started that course and yet eight whole weeks have passed. It started out with around ten of us not being able to run for more than a couple of minutes without needing to stop and re-inflate our lungs, and ended with about four of us (the hardcore four!) running for thirty minutes non stop, up and down hills, chatting away. Lungs of steel obviously fully developed! 

I have to say I am genuinely going to miss run club on Mondays. It was a really invigorating way to start my week and it was great to be able to do it with a group. The next thing we will probably do as a group will be triathlon training but that won't be until April (more on that later). In the meantime my Tuesday run club in my town is still going strong and, hopefully, I have managed to convince one of the Monday girls to come join me and the Tuesday lot. So yay!

An extra positive to add to all of this is that the trainer from Monday run club has very kindly put together a training plan for me to help me increase my running distance and actually be able to do the half marathon I signed up for in Brighton at the end of February. So if you were thinking that activity levels would drop around Christmas you were wrong! Ha. 

I leave you with an oh so attractive photo of the four of us hardcore ladies that made it all the way from lesson 1 to the final lesson 8. Many high fives were given. 

End of week 8

People suck

I don't like people. I try to minimise the number of times I have to spend in crowded places with lots of people I don't know. Crowds of people irritate me. I'm sure we've all felt this at some point. You know when you're walking down your high street and there's some person in front of you walking so slowly it's incredible? And they seem to somehow take up the entire pavement? With their sixteen bags and a pushchair and a little scooter and twelve children and an old person? Staring at their phone and bumping into everyone in front of them? You know that person. We all know that person. Let's call that person Meandering Man. Well today when I went for my run Meandering Man was out and had brought some friends along. 

When I started my run today I felt positive (shocking, I know). It wasn't raining or overly sunny, my new shoes are still comfy and I had just put a couple of new songs on my mp3 player that really got me in the mood to run. Everything was fine until I reached the main road and realised that the town fair was today. I had been hearing about it for weeks but completely did not realise that today was the day. Silly me. Aside from the millions of cars parked everywhere, including halfway on the pavement, there were millions of Meandering Men (and Wandering Women, don't get upset). Everywhere. This made running in a relatively straight line impossible. It would genuinely have been easier and possibly safer to run on the actual road. Which at one point I had to do because Meandering Man, Wandering Woman and their entourage took up the entire pavement and grass verge. Any plans I may have had to run three miles today went swiftly out the window. I was not putting up with this chaos any longer than I had to. Adding to the fun was the fact that many very fit looking (fit as in healthy not the other "he looked wellll fit innit" way) firemen and military personnel were at the fair, making me feel very inadequate and at the same time incredibly aware of how un-sexy I must look. Damn it. 

Anyway, back to my main point. Having to navigate past, around, through, under and over these many Meandering Men and Wandering Women added a good 40 seconds to my run time (picture my unimpressed face) and resulted in me feeling absolutely knackered. Genuinely the most exhausting run I have been on since I started. So in conclusion, I refer back to the title of this post. People suck.

Except for my readers. I love all of you. :)

Setbacks

Apologies for my lack of posting this week. After my fastest (so far) two mile run last Monday, the Running Gods obviously decided I was starting to get far too happy about this running malarkey. Their course of action this time was to send a large dose of the cold my way and so I face my first setback. I can't describe how frustrating it has been not to be able to keep up with my plan. I missed three scheduled runs. In the grand scheme not much but right now it feels huge to me. I had been finding it easier and easier to motivate myself to go for a run and I worry, now that I'm better, that I will struggle to get back into the swing of things. Not to mention I am now a whole week behind schedule!

Still, stubborn as I am, I refuse to let the Running Gods win this one. Yes, they kept me out of action for a week and yes, I am behind schedule but this has actually lead me to make some changes to my training plan. I can't catch up the week I missed, I just have to accept that life happens and move on. So instead of making myself feel bad I have taken control and really thought about what the plan was asking me to do. Having been running for a couple of weeks, I know now that the plan that was set out for me isn't realistic. It expects me to go from running three miles to running six in just over one week. When I started out I had no idea if this would be possible or not but having struggled through some three mile runs I can safely say that I am nowhere near ready to run twice that! 

So, instead of trying to fit myself to the plan and feeling bad when I don't match up, I am making the plan fit me. My first race is a 5k in July so the focus of the next month's training will be to get to the point where I feel comfortable running that distance and hopefully do it at a pace that makes me happy (aiming for the 30 minute mark but no promises!). Between now and race day I can't imagine I will be running any further than five miles at a time. Does that mean I won't have run the roughly eighty miles I thought I would at the beginning of training? Yes. Do I see that as a setback? Slightly (but only cause I'm a pessimist!). One thing I have learned: setbacks aren't always completely negative. This one has helped me understand that what I need doesn't always necessarily fit into tidy little colour-coded boxes. 

Although let's not lie, my new plan will obviously be colour-coded. Life is too short for greys and whites!

My Bra

My bra is awesome. I really can't say that enough. There is literally no bounce when I run. Zero bounce! Do you know the last time I could move without my boobs also moving? I was twelve. Countless "sports bras" later and I had basically given up hope that I would ever find something to strap my DD puppies down. Lo and behold I have finally found it: the Shock Absorber Run bra. My holy grail of bras. There is nothing worse than running (or indeed walking) around with an uncomfy, non-supportive bra on. Now I can smugly run around knowing that while I do, everything stays in its place.

(This is definitely not my stomach by the way, although my boobs are way more awesome than hers.)

See? Isn't she (the bra) glorious? No pointy wires that stab you, some extra heavy duty straps which don't dig in and a little bit of pink to keep me feeling girly. Love it.

Now, we've all at one point or another stuffed something down our bras: money, ID, another bra... so obviously, when faced with the dilemma of where to keep my music when running my mind went straight to my bra. I don't have a bumbag and the pockets in my trousers are far too small for both my music and my keys. With this in mind I decided to conduct an experiment and went for a run with my mp3 inelegantly stuffed down my cleavage. I attached a lanyard to it just in case the bra plan failed me mid-run but I have to say, so far I haven't had any mishaps. My mp3 player nestles snugly in there and I don't even notice it! This is nigh on miraculous for me and only adds to the many brownie points this bra is earning with me. I do hope that my mp3 player is at least slightly damp-resistant though cause you know, sweat is a thing that happens.

I should mention I haven't been asked/paid by anyone to write about my bra,  I am just genuinely this excited by it. Sad, I know.

Races

As I mentioned in my first ever post, I need a certain level of motivation in order to keep going with my running plan. Part of that motivation (other than the pretty new running clothes) comes from the fact that I have signed up for some races over the space of the next year. I can't back out. I have spent money on entry fees and running kit, all of which means that if I don't follow through I will not only have wasted money but also wasted running spots which could have been occupied by "real runners" (more on them later). 

It all started with the Race for Life 5K run in Hampsted Heath this July 4th. Having not run at all for over half a decade I figured this would be the place to start. Nice and easy. 

See? Proof this is actually happening. Has my name on it and everything so now I have to go through with it.

After the 5K I plan on doing a 10K. Haven't decided which one yet but this hasn't stopped me from going ahead and entering a half marathon in the new year. Yes, you read correctly. I have gone from 5K to contemplating running just over four times that distance. I signed up to the Vitality Brighton Half Marathon mainly because I have heard some very good things about it and also because the course takes you along the seafront for most of the race. At least I will have something pretty to look at while I curse myself for ever signing up for things like this. This will be happening on the 28th February next year. Did I mention that is two weeks after my wedding? No stuffing my face with cake and slacking off training for me!

Finally, I have thrown my name in the hat for the big one. The 2016 London Marathon. Odds are slim, given that almost a quarter of a million (247,069!!) people are hoping for a place, and I am not holding my breath but it still acts as motivation. If I do get a place and don't train I will be in a sticky, awkward situation. If I don't get a place I plan on running a marathon anyway, it just won't be the London one. 

So there we are. A year long plan with nice little distance markers along the way so I feel like I'm  constantly accomplishing things. 

Wish me luck!

The Plan

Organisation has never been my strong point. Ok, that's not entirely true. I'm great at organising other people. I just can't seem to take my own advice. However, fresh start and all that... so I went and found a running plan which seemed achievable and spent longer than I'm proud of making it all colour-coded with happy colours (no murky browns or icky greys for me, thank you).

So there it is. My own SmartCoach plan for running 5K in eight weeks. It lives on the cupboard the biscuits live in, in an attempt to discourage me from snacking on them unnecessarily (although I like to argue that biscuits are always necessary). The plan has me going for my first run this Tuesday and splits my runs into "easy runs" (blue), "tempo runs" (hot pink), "speedwork" (red) and "long runs" (yellow). Green bits are rest days, lilac is yoga and the solitary orange square is race day! I know that cross training is an important part of training for this sort of thing so for the time being I have chosen to do yoga as it is something which can be done from the comfort of my living room. Further down the line I will be joining a gym and introducing some other forms of cross training to keep things interesting but I figure easy does it in the beginning!

Given that I have no idea how fast I can run 5 kilometres - last time I did was in secondary school many many moons ago - when asked to estimate how long it would take me I said one hour. Basically, walking pace. But, and this is the key sneaky-mind-trick-motivation tool, when I get out there and realise that I can probably shave at least a couple of minutes off that hour estimate I will feel like I've already accomplished something. Even though I technically haven't, at all. See? Sneaky.