Evening…..
It’s a tale of three halves this evening (maths never was my strong point!)
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Last Thursday I had toothache 
Well actually I had it on Wednesday too but I was doing that “if I don’t acknowledge it to myself it might go away” thing. Luckily I already had an appointment booked for a checkup for Friday but Thursday was a very very long day as it was really sore. I hate the way that toothache really invades everywhere in your face! I was quite worried that the dentist would say it needed root canal work as it’s a previously filled tooth. Luckily he didn’t say that but he did say something else that shocked me. He asked me if I was still running as apparently “you don’t look as slim as last time I saw you”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a cheek!!!! The nurse and I just looked at each other in disbelief whilst I uttered a ‘how ruuuuuuuuude’. Anyway, he filled my tooth but said he didn’t know if it would work as the tooth is a bit loose. It’s still sore today (3 days later) so I’m a bit worried that it should have settled down by now. I’m back to the head in the sand approach so we’ll see what happens! As a result of the tooth issues I didn’t do my planned run on Friday lunchtime and I couldn’t do it later as we went out to celebrate my friend Paula’s 100 mile run We had a fantastic night in the Black Swan in Swanage. I’ve never been there before but will definitely be back as the food was incredible.
Hurray the sun has finally come back out from behind the fog!!!!
I am pleased to report that my legs still work. Having a desk job is not great when you’ve run 20 miles, especially as I’m so busy that I just get lost in what I am doing and forget to get up and stretch my legs. However, having said all that my legs have been surprisingly okay. My shoulders were a bit sore…I must try and remember to shake them out and relax them a bit more when I do a longer run.
I had a recovery run in my plan for Monday but I decided against that for a couple of reasons.
- I didn’t want to run on tarmac (which I have to do if I run at lunchtime) and I didn’t have time to run after work
- I felt a bit knackered!
Hello!!!
It’s me, do you even remember who I am? I’m sorry I’ve been a rubbish blogger but I do have some valid excuses.
It all started when our internet stopped working. OMG, how horrid was that. How did we ever live without it? Not only could I not blog but I couldn’t keep up with all the blogs that I like to read. It also put me very behind on a special project that I was working on.
When the internet finally started working again I had an awful lot to catch up on and that took a lot of time and then I got to the point where I kept starting blog posts but then not posting them as I felt silly as I hadn’t done it for so long…soooooo I decided to bite the bullet and get on with it! Thank you to all those of who have messaged or nagged me to do this! I promise to try a bit harder now…
So I’ll start with a summary
Since I last posted I have……
- Done some quite long runs
- Run a 10 mile race, very slowly!
- Had a hideous cold, followed by sinusitis
- Done some more long runs
- Had a shin splint
- Done some quite short runs (not on the tarmac!)
- Become adept at mind boringly numb treadmill intervals
- Done quite a lot of swimming
- Become well acquainted with the weirdos that hang out in Poole Park (I don’t mean the parkrunners!)
- Attempted my first ‘back on the road run’
- Had my first 100 mile total for a 30 day period
- Spent quite a lot of time working on a brand new marathon…..
Well what a weekend I’ve had! I’m still full of this flipping cold and dosing up on every remedy I can think of but it certainly hasn’t held me back. My glowing nose would make Rudolph jealous though!
On Friday I was very careful to make sure that I drank lots and lots of water and continued the weeks trend of trying to keep my carb intake fairly high. I did succumb to a bit of comfort food though, a jacket potato with cheese and beans is just what a ‘feeling sorry for me’ Rose needed for Friday lunch. I made a quick pasta dish for dinner, wholemeal pasta twists with a Lloyd Grossman Red Pepper sauce and a tonne of sweetcorn stirred in. Minimum effort, maximum taste = my kinda food!
Thank you soooo much darling boy of mine! I’m not feeling too good today. Throat is very very sore and I don’t have a lot of voice (hurray all around me say!) and I am starting to develop a cough. I also seem to have lost the ability to think properly and am having particular problems thinking of the right words for things so please forgive me if this entire blog is written in gobbledegook!
I’ve been to the chemist and bought myself some garlic tablets (tried taking the real thing but am now hating the constant garlicky taste in my mouth!), some echinacea and some of the new menthol lemsips. Am also eating lots of vitamin c rich food as well as taking my normal berocca. I WILL NOT BE ILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday I went to see the lovely Anne-Marie Samuel at Body In Motion for a bit of a legs MOT. It was down to her handiwork that I even made the marathon start line last year so I thought this year I would go for the preventative approach rather than waiting until something hurt!
I’ve mentioned Paula before when she did her 24 hour event last year and ran 75 miles! This year she’s decided to go one step further and is going to be running a 100 mile ultra in March. You can follow her training exploits on her blog.
Last saturday she decided to run a 45 mile ultra as a training run! It started in Northampton and finished in Tring. She managed to rig her garmin up with a charger so had the complete race in her garmin stats and it makes very impressive reading.
The race turned out to be 46.6 miles and she did it in 8hrs 54mins. An incredible time and her race splits are amazing to read, nearly all 10 min something miles with the longer ones being where the checkpoints are. I just can’t imagine being able to run that consistently for sooooo many miles. Oh and she was out running again tonight taking the beginners running course in Swanage. What a lady!
No really……today, for the first time in my life, I was chased by a chimpanzee. Admittedly there was a fence and a scraggy hedge between us but he still chased us and it was still a very very strange and quite exciting experience!
More of that later…..
…is what I’ll be having tonight! Not for any reasons of romance but because we have a lovely new mattress, lovely new pillows and lovely new bedding and I can’t wait to go and get in it. We got a fantastic Groupon deal for a memory foam mattress and despite a few delays (and a few worried moments) it arrived yesterday. Our old mattress was 14 years old so well overdue being replaced.
Wednesday’s Club Run….
…..was very hectic. Tish wasn’t able to lead her group so the two groups became a one HUGE group. As I knew that this was likely I’d planned a fairly simple route as I knew I wouldn’t be able to run near enough to the front to shout the turn offs all the time.
I still didn’t expect to have 22 runners! There was a fantastic club turnout on Wednesday so the other groups were also pretty big and I think Swanage must just have been a blur of fluorescent runners. A couple of times we crossed routes with other groups and it got a bit confusing trying to keep count of everyone but luckily I had some great people in the group who helped out by getting the faster runners to loop back and some others who were back markers for me. We did 4.5 miles at a pretty decent pace and managed not to lose a single person! Bargain!
Another Tuesday, another swim……..
First I’d like to say thanks for the suggestions after my running on empty post yesterday. I’ve added a comment about a few bits I missed just to reassure people that I wasn’t ACTUALLY trying to do a long run without any food or water, it just felt like I was by about half way through.
Tuesday is normally my day to work in Farnborough and last week I used the pool at lunchtime so I’d factored that into my plan for this week too. As it happens I didn’t have to go (hurray to not seeing the M3 this week!!) so I decided to use the pool in Wareham on my way home (I have to pick G up from Brownies anyway so not worth going home just to go straight out again!).
I got a bit held up at work and was worried that I wouldn’t have time to do my planned 850 metres but as I got into the pool I realised that I’d misjudged how long the Farnborough pool was last week (I’d assumed it was 25 metres like Wareham), that meant I’d done a lot further in my half an hour than I thought!
I stuck to breast stroke again, my front crawl is rubbish but I am slightly concerned that it might not be great for my knee (all that twisting if I’m not careful about form?). It hasn’t hurt or anything but I do remember Anne-Marie telling me not to do it when my knee was hurt last year. I’m seeing her next week so I’ll see what she says. I did 40 lengths – 1000 metres, jumped in the shower and rushed off to get Grace through the freezing fog (yeuck!)
I just looked up the Farnborough pool length and it’s actually 33 metres, this means that I did 1056 metres last week and not 800 as I’d previously thought. Excellent…although that does mean I did 56 more last week than this and that is NOT in the plan! I’m really enjoying being back in the pool, it was the one and only exercise that I still enjoyed when I was fat mummy (as Elliot so kindly describes my pre fit mummy days!!)
Beginners Running Course
Tonight was the first night of a 10 week Beginners’ Running Course that my lovely friend Paula (check out her blog about her Ultra) is running (in association with Purbeck Runners). I’ve just had a quick peek at our club forum and she had an amazing turn out; 28 total beginners, 4 improvers and 7 Purbeck Runners who went along to help out. She really is upholding our club motto ‘Get Purbeck Running!!!!’ I wish I’d had Paula to help me when I was starting out!
If you run, how did you get started? With a group? On your own? Or is it something you’ve always done?
Sleep tight, off to plank, clam and dip now!
Rosexxx
How on earth is it Monday again already? I hope that everyone had a great weekend. Ours was mostly pretty good but a lot too short!
As you know I had a 12 miler planned for Sunday. Tish’s club run was 11 miles so I only needed to weave around a bit or loop back a few times to make up the extra mile. Unfortunately I wasn’t at all up for any looping!
I’m still confused about what I should/shouldn’t eat as I was fine for the first 6 miles but the 2nd 6 miles were just awful.
There are several reasons this could be:
a. I had a very heavy training week and maybe I’m just not used to it…Sun-10 mile race, Mon-2.5 mile run, Tues-800m swim, Weds-5 mile tempo run, Thurs-rest, Fri-45 minute intervals run & 11 mile cycle, Sat-3 mile walk, 3 mile cycle then the running on empty run on Sunday …. I do normally run 3 times a wk but I haven’t done intervals or cycled since before xmas and the swim is a new addition.
b. I’m not eating enough in general (I’m on 1100 cals and eat about half my exercise cals- less when it’s long run day)
c. I should have carbed up the night before. I used to make sure I had a bit carby meal the night before a long run but I’ve been trying to avoid that until I’m on 15 miles plus
d. I’m on a dry month and my body NEEEEDS at least 1 glass of wine before a long run (how I wish it was this one!!!)
e. none of the above…just a bad run…
I muted these ideas on WLR earlier and I’ve had a lot of useful suggestions. I think I do need to eat all my exercise cals if my base number are so low and I’m doing this much exercise. I’ll look again at the sort of carbs that are best to eat and try and include more of those. The other very interesting suggestion was lack of hydration. I’m very good at drinking gallons of water during the week but rubbish at remembering on a Saturday. Must try harder! I did also realise that there were 1100 feet of elevations which is quite a lot!
I nearly forgot to tell you that I went into the sea after the run! There were great waves and it was blooooomin freezing but it really did sort out my aching muscles. I was even okay to go for a couple of bike rides with the kids in the afternoon (one of which ended in disaster when poor G went flying over the handlebars..she’s very bruised and battered today!)
Recovery Run
I did a short recovery run again today. Slightly longer than last weeks at 3.5 miles but it felt okay, despite me getting the wind direction wrong so doing the prom section into a horrid headwind! I’m rushing this post now as I want to plank and do my clams and get to bed by 11pm (my new promise to myself is to get more sleep!)
Any ideas/suggestions about my running on empty would be very gratefully received
Rosexxxx
