Marathon update with inane rambalings about tea and oranges

We are now 73/2 days, depending how you count(correctly or not), away from marathon day. At this point on marathon day I expect to be hating the world and wishing I had never got a place. If I am on target for 10 or 11 min miles at this point on marathon day then I should be ....(let me work this out)....about 4 hours 15 or ~ 24 miles in and about to go down towards the finish. The thought of all this still fills me with a kind of fear nay dread, yet the excitement won't go away.

On Sunday we ran 16 miles, which reminds me I have to grab my tea and an orange, in separate containers; I am not that wyrd. But they could be great together....? Back in a bit. While carrying those back to the laptop I navigate my way round the hoover and countless other things I had foolishly left in the middle of the floor. Anyway back to what I was saying.... On Sunday we covered 16 miles, both of us in new trainers, me because the merchandising at Meet The Experts worked on me and BB because her last pair died, a most terrible death. Mine gave me a blister and BB's were great.

In other news we are a couple of weeks away from running our first proper half-marathon, the Sussex Beacon Half-Marathon. And a bit more away from running the Kilomathon which should be fun/painful. Nom, Nom, Nom orange washed down with tea is really tasty. If exceptionally sweet, I got some tasty oranges form the Cypriot shop in Haringey.

16 miles last week, then 6 next week; before the half marathon, then back up towards the 16, 8, 16.3 (kilomathon), then 18, 10, 20, 12, 8, !!!!26.2!!!!

I will try to keep things updated here.....

Also our new bed arrived and it is great :)

Benito's Hat

Does everyone remember how I said last week that long runs were a joy? Well they're not. Yesterday we traipsed (that's the only word that can really describe it) around London for hours on end in order to clock up our 14 mile quota. We went from base camp in Holloway to Angel, along the Regent's Canal all the way to Limehouse, through Wapping, across Tower Bridge, along the South Bank all the way to Westminster Bridge, through Parliament Square to Whitehall, then through Trafalgar Square and up Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road to finish at Benito's Hat on Goodge Street.

Benito's Hat is great. They sell burritos and tacos and not a lot else, but you can have all the fillings in the world inside them. And, best of all, they make your burrito or tacos right in front of you, so you don't need to wait for ages (which is really important when you've just run (traipsed) 14 miles).

During the run, I managed to sustain my first real injury of the training campaign. I can almost hear you thinking "knee? ankle? hamstring?" No, don't be silly. I managed to injure my left arm. That's right - I injured my arm while running. You are now thinking "how could she possibly injure her arm while running?" Well, I did it while trying my hardest not to fall into the canal. We were on a cobbled humpbacked bridge that takes the towpath over the entrance to a canal basin. I caught my toe on a cobble and did that uncontrollable-staggering-forwards-while-trying-not-to-fall-over-and-trying-not-to-look-too-stupid thing, paying special attention to changing my course sufficiently to avoid going head first into the canal. This resulted in my careering into the back of James who, luckily, had realised I was about to fall over and had braced himself for the collision. Not so my arm, which got itself twisted up. It felt OK for the rest of the run and it wasn't until bedtime that I realised I'd done something quite nasty to it. Getting dressed this morning was quite tricky.

On the bright side, my horrible deal signed late on Saturday night, so this week I should be able to get back into the swing of the mid-week running, all in preparation for next week's 16-miler.

Long Hard Slog

When I tell people that I'm going to run some insane distance of a weekend, they usually raise an eyebrow, mutter something about the state of my mental health and then ask me if I "feel better" for all the running. Well, here's the answer to that question - no. No, I don't feel better. My legs hurt, I've had a cough since Christmas that won't go away and I'm being shafted at work which makes getting up in the morning to go running all the more difficult. However, going on a long run at the weekend is a joy. Getting out of the house and running to some random place or other (OK, so it's not literally random, we usually have a destination in mind before we set out) is incredibly motivating - you get to see new things and places you haven't been before and, best of all, if you are running somewhere new, you don't know where all the mile markers are!

Our midweek runs are a different matter. As I already alluded to, getting out of work before midnight is a challenge at the moment, and that's making getting up before noon even more of a challenge! James and I have discussed our lack of motivation for midweek runs at length. We think that following the snowy and icy period over the New Year, we haven't managed to quite get back into the swing of things. As the long runs have got longer, our enthusiasm for a 3-mile morning saunter has dwindled and we're trying to find ways to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and sprint off into the distance. So far, we've determined that we need to sort out our nutrition (yes, 60-65% of a training diet should come from carbs but no, the carbs shouldn't all come from wine gums, cola and chocolate) and we think we need some new routes to run on our shorter runs - as they say, variety is the spice of life.

Another thing to try that I found while traversing the Internet the other day is a new type of interval training. I say new - it's probably been around for donkeys' years, but its new to me, and it's so simple (when you know how) that I'm slightly concerned that I didn't think of it myself. It's called Pyramid Intervals and the idea is that after a 5 minute warm-up jog, you run hard for one minute, easy for one minute, hard for two minutes, easy for two minutes, and so on up to five minutes (but keeping the recoveries at two minutes), and then back down again to one minutes. As sad as it sounds, I'm actually quite excited about this newfangled idea and can't wait to try it out - it can't be any worse than repeating the same intervals (4 mins hard, 2 mins easy) over and over again... can it?

Another thing that appears to be stagnating at the moment is our fundraising total - we hit £1,245 over a week ago and haven't raised a penny since. If you'd like to help us get out of a fundraising rut, please go to http://www.justgiving.com/bbjamarathon to give us a hand!

On parks and insatiable hunger

So we did make it to Sarita's house two weeks ago, and how wonderful it was to be greeted by a glass of champagne! Eleven miles is a very long way and it was still a bit icy underfoot in places. The next week was a cutback week, meaning we had to run "just" 8 miles at the weekend; we finished that run in the excellent Lockside Lounge in Camden Market - they do the most wonderful chicken, chorizo and olive pie with mashed potato and gravy (a recipe I'm happy to say we've stolen for home, but we still go there to have someone else make it for us once in a while!)

This past weekend, we ran to the Coal Hole on the Strand. We couldn't decide which park to run around, so we ran round all of them - Holloway to the Coal Hole via Hampstead Heath, Regent's Park, Hyde Park, Green Park and St James's Park. Hyde Park was the low point, mentally, but after a quick stop to get some Sprite we were on our way to the finish line. As the crow flies, it's only about 4 miles from Holloway to the Strand, so it was amazing that our winding route had taken us 12 miles. TWELVE MILES! I can run TWELVE MILES!

Today I have been contemplating the insatiable hunger that seems to go along with the long runs. After our 12 miler on Saturday I had a cottage pie at the Coal Hole (the pub is in the corner of the Savoy building, and it was not lost on me that they served the pie with Savoy cabbage!) and chips. Then I had pasta and sauce for dinner. I was monumentally hungry all day on Sunday (and ate enough to satisfy that hunger on a normal day) and now writing this close to lunchtime on Monday, I find that I could eat a horse (if I had one, which I don't).

A post-run cup of tea has become another institution (apart from eating pie) we seem to have adoped on our weekend runs - we were sitting in the Coal Hole on Saturday having drunk some soft drinks, wondering why we didn't really feel any better, when I remembered the restorative qualities of tea. After just about every other run we have had tea and I'm not sure whether it is a Pavlovian response or whether it really does make everything better, but either way it does the trick!

We are now up to £1,245 in our fundraising, so just about a quarter of the way to our target - please help us to get there by sponsoring us at http://www.justgiving.com/bbjamarathon

Thanks!

Its snow annoying

The recent cold snap has been incredibly frustrating. It has stopped any real training happening for a couple of weeks now. We should have run quiet a few miles between 20th and 29th, but had no chance to run due to snow and ice. We managed intervals on the 30th, then a small recovery run on the 31st. Since then we managed to run 10 miles on the 3rd, but that was through stubbornness rather than any real sense that both of us managed to run 10 miles. I ran around platt fields park in Manchester many, many, many, many times to make up the distance, whereas BB ran from home to Nat's house. Since then we have had the sense to keep ourselves wrapped up and warm.
We are meant to run 11 miles this weekend, but I have no idea if we will manage it. We aim, if possible, to run to Sarita's house this Sunday.

Christmas Cheer

The training is really gathering pace now - we ran 8 miles on Sunday, which is the furthest either of us have ever run. We're getting close to a third of the marathon distance which, with four months still to go, is pretty good progress. It is still amazing to me that I have run nearly 250 miles this year, especially considering we didn't start until April and had a 6 week break over the summer!

The fundraising is also gathering speed now - we're up to £580, but there's still a long way to go. We're really hoping that people will be infected with the Christmas spirit (or spirits!!) and put their hands deep into their pockets for us. We're also hoping to host a fundraising event sometime in the New Year - watch this space!!

Thanks for all the support and have a great Christmas!

The Movember 10k

So, today we ran our first "training race" for the marathon - the Movember 10k. We lined up with 617 other moustache sporting (yes, even the ladies) lunatics in a blustery Greenwich Park and ran up and down hills until we hurt. A lot. The hills were all a bit much and there was sideways rain. The worst thing was that we had seen the course map beforehand, so we knew when we ran down the steep hill just after the start that we would have to run back up it again nine and a half kilometres later. In spite of battling with eye infections, sore quads and the cold, it was a good run and BB got a personal best (which is still pitifully bad, but faster than before nonetheless!)

The next race we have arranged is the Sussex Beacon Half Marathon, and that isn't until February, so we're looking for a few more to do (anything between 5k and 10 miles, depending on when it is).

In the meantime, back to the training....