2 sleeps to go

The latest batch of antibiotics (the 3rd) seems to have finally cleared the infection up – I woke up without a headache for the first time in 8 weeks on Monday. However, with the countdown to Juneathon beginning, I ‘d already taken a tentative step towards exercising again.

It’s been ages since I last ran, and as I’m crap at running in high temperatures I decided to try a little run on the treadmill we have in our newly refurbished conservatory gym*. After 5 minutes I remembered why I hadn’t used it since the OH set it up 3 months ago. God they are so BORING and HOT and REPETITIVE blah blah blah, I’m sure I don’t need to blather on about the evils of treadmills to you. BUT, I wanted to make sure I could still run without collapsing in a heap, and I can so mission achieved. I felt OK so I switched to a circuit training instead and did 60 minutes which I was v pleased with.

As ever, I’m using an athon to kickstart my weight loss. When I started Janathon 2011 I was a stone heavier than I am now, and was not a runner. 17 months on, I’ve run 5ks, 10ks, half marathons and even a marathon, so I’m proud to call myself a runner. And an athoner, as without the athons and athoners I wouldn’t have done half as much!

My next goal is to get a sub 5 hour marathon which I plan to achieve at the Luton Marathon on the 18th November (actually I don’t have much choice as it has a 5hr finish cut off – eeek!). With the training I’ve done, I don’t think I can get any faster without losing weight, so this is my goal. Lose 2lbs a week, and with 24 weeks til the Marathon, that gives me a weight loss of 48 pounds. According to the runners world calculator each pound of weight loss makes you approx 2 secs per mile faster. So doing a quick calculation a 48 pound loss would make me 96 seconds quicker per mile which means erm…ur… (do I carry the 3 or divide…..) er a…well I reckon at a conservative guess 11 minute miles which is under 5 hours. Luckily, Elaine (my coach from running club) is the race director so she says it’s OK if I go slightly over the 5 hours but I’m determined not to! I met up with her tofay for my first run in 24 days. We plodded around 3.4 miles in 47 minutes. Well, we mostly chatted with the odd burst of running in between really. It was nice – the air had that lovely green sunny smell, and we went round the lanes and only saw a couple of cars and people.

I’ve just realised that fitting in my Juneathon on friday is going to be a challenge – I am working 8am-5pm and have to get home change and get back out quick to catch a train to Leeds at 6.50pm. I might have to break my cardinal rule and get up at 6am or else face the wrath of jogblog for falling at the first hurdle. Bah.

* OK OK I might be stretching the truth, we just put in a treadmill and got some free weigths to go with the york fitness centre we already had.

Ooooh Juenathon is nearly here!

I was feeling slightly jealous when everyone started tweeting and blogging about running the BUPA 10k last weekend, so I decided to enter the ZSL Zoo stampede which is a 3 lap 10k at Whipsnade Zoo. Turns out quite a few of my friends from Striders as well as Kim and my physio are also running it, so it’s going to be a fab day. Although at the moment I am on my 3rd lot of antibiotics in 6 weeks for sinusitis so I’ll only be running if I feel better.

I also entered Juneathon last week so I’ll be exercising and blogging every day in June. If you haven’t already signed up, get on over to the webpage and do it now lazy arse!

Nothing much else to tell you – I haven’t exercised for 3 weeks due to the sinusitis and am itching to get back into something, so I’m looking forward to getting better and starting Juneathon!

Regents Park Summer Series 10k

Decided at the last minute (ish – because I did have to know before I went to bed so that I could set my alarm to get up) to meet up with Alma and run the Regents Park 10k.

You know you have those (rare) times when you realise your running is going well and you want to be out all the time? I think I’m having one! I woke up at 6.43, 2 mins before my alarm, all eager beaver, jumped out of bed with NO snooze (unheard of) and was at the station 15 minutes early. When I met up with Alma she asked me if I wanted to run a fast race, I said, all nonchalantly, oh no I only did London 2 weeks ago, I just want to see if I can run it all, but in my head I was thinks YES – I am going for a PB! I didn’t want to say it out loud in case it didn’t happen.

I calculated that to beat my previous PB of 1:09:16 I would need to average less than 11m 15s per mile, which after yesterdays run I felt was doable. I have blogged about the course before – its 3 laps with a hill in the middle of each lap. I thought as long as I didn’t lose too much time on the hill I would do it.

1st time I hit the hill, it seemed easy! Wow, I thought when I got to the top – did I really used to think that was a hill? Pah!
2nd time I hit the hill, ooh this is a bit harder this time, still, I have my marathon legs on ! I can do this I’ve only run 3 miles and I ran a a marathon 2 weeks ago!
3rd time I hit the hill, oh…my….God…do…they…actually…have…this…on…hydraulics….to…make…it…steeper…each…time?

But I pushed on and for the 1st time ever I ran ALL of a 10k. I also achieved negative splits on the laps for the 1st time in this race, AND got a PB of 1m 42s. I’m chuffed to bits!

Carla Greer Chip Time 01:07:34 Lap 1 00:24:04 Lap 2 00:22:32 Lap 3 00:22:25

It’s now 7.10pm, I’ve had a nap to recuperate and I’m heading out with some friends to officially celebrate my marathon and 10k PB!

Northampton Parkrun

Beautiful morning for a run, and I had the pleasure of Abradypus’ company and the convenience of her acting as chaffeur to get me from home to Northampton Park Run. Today was it’s 1st day (I seem to be making a habit of joining Louise at parkruns within easy reach of my house – this is my 3rd this year) and they had a good turn out for it. I persuaded one of the girls I work with who has only been running for 6 weeks (inspired by me apprently!) to join us, so at 9am we lined up with 117 other people to start our weekends off with a 5k run, which then allows you to eat and drink what you like for the rest of the weekend with little or no guilt.

I hadn’t intended to run particularly fast, I had no idea what pace Eileen (from work) could sustain, so I started us out at a 12m mile. I needn’t have worried – we’re very evenly paced and we soon sped up so the 1st mile whizzed by in 10:46, the seond was 10:52 and the last was 10:18. About 150m from the end I realised I was close to my 5k PB (31:35) so I sped up, but I ended up just missing it and clocking 31:41.

Great day out, The Racecourse is a lovely 5k with a slight but not too taxing hill in the middle, and a very lovely coffee shop for after. The team were, as you’d expect, very friendly and enthusiastic and it has a very mixed field – there were still another 30 finishers after us which suggests this will be a good one for beginners and hopefully they’ll attract some new runners as a result.

Oh, here are some pictures from VLM of me crossing Tower Bridge I forgot to post:

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First run since VLM

I attempted a run last Thursday with running club that ended up turning into a 3 mile walk because my legs just weren’t up for it. Monday club was out, so that left tonight if I was going to get any sort of practice in before Northampton Parkrun on Saturday with Louise. I went out with 4 women who range from 20 – 35 years older than me, thinking we’ll plod around 3 miles at a 12m mile pace. Oh how wrong I was!

Firstly, we decided to go cross country, which meant I had to really pay attention to where I was running. Secondly, the route we picked was a hilly 5 miles. 5 miles…was I really up for that. Only one way to find out I thought and off I went. I got chatting to one of them and the 1st 2 miles went pretty quick – I checked run keeper when we stopped to wait for the there’s to catch up (garmin was out of juice) we’d done them in 18 minutes…we followed it with a 200m downhill followed by a mile and a half uphill, and I surprised myself by running the whole thing – I suppose the marathon training has left my legs, and me, stronger than I realised.

We completed the 5 miles in 56 minutes, had I carried on to 6 miles I probably would’ve beaten my 10k time. I started thinking that I should go do the Regents Park 10k on Sunday and try for a PB then one of the women said maybe I should wait and see how I feel on Saturday. she’s probably right but whether I do it this weekend or not, I do feel strong enough to go for a PB in my 5 and 10k times within the next couple of months.

Oh, I’m also considering (yes Alma considering!) doing the Luton Marathon on the 18th November. I’m going to start a 24 week training plan at the beginning of June and see how I go…