The training begins!

...in which I talk about running and future plans for the blog.

Now that I have reached my Slimming World target and don't intend to lower it again (I have lost a total of 4 stone 1 lb and I feel pretty happy with how I look and feel now; still toning up a bit, but getting there), I have decided I need a new project to blog about and help keep me at my target.

So, as you might have read in the last blog entry, I have entered the Greater Manchester Marathon. to raise funds for the Isabelle Lottie Foundation. You can donate by clicking the button over on the right, or if you'd rather you can donate to Amy, who ran 53 marathons in 53 days, here. (It goes to the same cause and she deserves to get to her target)!

I've had the app that Asics provide generate a training plan for me; I'm not following it too closely though, mainly because the initial "pre-conditioning" runs would seem like a big step backwards, and I pay for the gym so I'm not skipping my resistance or core strengthening sessions. And anyway I enjoy them. I'm not quite sure what happened to the me that was horrified at the idea of going to a gym...

Having blogged about running when I was preparing for the Reading Half Marathon back in 2011 (was it really that long ago?!) I know that it can be a bit dull, so I won't be doing a huge number of posts about that - I will occasionally do a bit about the marathon preparation, but I'm going to keep blogging about food as it's much more varied (today's dinner: Slimming World friendly quiche with slimming world chips, baked beans and steamed sweetcorn).

I'm going to aim to do 2 blog posts a week now; one on a Monday after weigh in (yes, I will keep going to the Slimming World group - I really like them, and I will stay as often as I can) and one at the weekend to talk about whatever's happened in the week and occasionally my marathon preparation. 

Training this week has consisted of a 7.7 mile run on Tuesday morning, and a 6 mile run on the treadmill last night. On Sunday I'm aiming for my first run over 10 miles (abiding by the "10% increase per week" rule - I did 9.5 miles last week).

Apparently I need a thing called a "foam roller" to help prevent injuries. Having looked into it, it seems that these things hurt and some of the pictures look as if they'd be more likely to cause injuries than prevent them...

So there we go. As always, plans are subject to change.

Is that it?

....in which a milestone is reached.

Today was Monday, and therefore weigh-in day; I was pretty sure that I would get to target this week, but not absolutely certain, so it was a great relief to get on the scales and have it confirmed (I lost 2lb, so I've now lost a total of 4 stone 1lb (25.8kg, for those who prefer measurement systems with less character but more logic) since January).

As an illustration of what that looks like, there's a before/after picture at the bottom of this post.

As another illustration, Claire the Very Lovely Consultant brought a wrapped up box of....something,,,(I assume it was stones) to group tonight, and had us pass it round. It weighed a stone, and it's very hard to believe that I was carrying 4 of those around with me; a stone is a lot more than I realised. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to run more than about half a mile carrying something that heavy.

The challenge now, of course, is to stay at target. I don't have to pay for Slimming World now as long as I stay within 3lb either side of target; my wife has managed this for well over a year now. It's surprising how many good habits you pick up over 9 months of eating sensibly and exercising, so I'm hoping I won't find it too difficult, but time will tell. Plans to keep me at target are already afoot....(see below).

Since I know myself, and therefore know that I tend to have an attitude of "well that's done" to things I've already achieved, and also know that healthy living is not something you "achieve" and then stop doing, I have already set my sights on a new target. It's a little extreme, but after running with Amy and managing 21 miles the other day I believe I can do it, so I've signed up for a marathon. Um. Gulp.

To be specific, I've signed up for the Greater Manchester Marathon in 2015...since it was Amy that inspired me to do this, I have decided to run it for the Isabelle Lottie foundation, which raises funds for children and young adults with brain tumours (I also have a cousin who is directly affected by this).

If you can afford to and would like to donate, my BT "mydonate" page is here: https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/chrisnmanchestermarathon. 

If you'd rather, you can donate to Amy's page here (it goes to the same cause, but she's prettier than me and really deserves it): https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/53marathons

Here's the obligatory before/after picture:

A week of strange happenings

...in which odd things have occurred

You may (or may not, depending on how often you read the blog and how much notice you take of it)  remember that back in June, our younger son's scooter went missing when the Elder Teen left it in the park while we were at the beach.

This week it turned up out of the blue; some of the younger teen's friends saw someone on it, asked him where he'd got it (apparently he'd just found it) and brought it back to us. Since we've claimed insurance we have to pay that back (but not all of it, which was a bit of a surprise...insurance companies being reasonable and quite nice is a new one on me).

Our kettle (which had stopped working for no apparent reason a couple of weeks ago) started working again (also for no apparent reason); since I'd had to buy a new kettle we now have a spare one (we like the old one because it has a filter in it).

The oddest thing that happened though was probably Wednesday. Amy, who is doing 53 marathons on 53 consecutive days was in town. She's from a local village, so I thought I would go along and support her by running with her for part of the route around the town (along with some other folks, including a lady from the Slimming World group I go to).

I don't have much work on at the moment (if anybody needs a contractor to write C# for them please feel free to get in touch), so I had most of the day free; I originally intended to run until around 11, when we would get to my daughter's school. I'd run 9.5 miles last Sunday, and that was supposed to be around the 10 mile mark, so I was pretty confident that I could do that; I had to drop Princess Bubblegum off at school and only had about 15 minutes to get to the start, so I ran up there to be on time.

So...somehow I didn't quite stop at my daughter's school. I didn't stop when we got to Whittington either (although I didn't know how far we'd run at that point)...and then just after Whittington someone said we'd just passed the half-marathon mark. By now I'd made friends with another runner and we were running together, and neither of us wanted to stop, although we were both quite surprised to hear that we'd gone quite that far.

Somehow, even though neither of us usually runs more than 10 miles, we carried on to West Felton (where Amy was interviewed by the BBC at her old school) and then back to Oswestry....at this point it was around 2:30PM and I had to stop and pick the daughter up from school (and my running partner had given up and got into the pace vehicle, but she'd made it to 20 miles). 

I worked out later than I had run a total of around 21 miles (including the run up to the start point and the runs around the various school fields with school kids); I'm pretty sure I could have made it to the end of the full thing if I'd had the time though.

This was more than a little surprising, since the furthest I'd ever "run" before was the Reading half marathon, and I ended up walking probably about 5 miles of that (I was 4 stone heavier back then, after all, and I couldn't train properly); I was running all the way this time, although there were admittedly quite a few breaks for things like photos.

It definitely helped to be running with other people; I usually run alone, which gives me a chance to listen to music and get a certain amount of peace (in a house with 2 teenagers that's in short supply), but there was a lovely feeling of camaraderie about the event, even though a lot of us didn't know each other.

My legs still feel pretty good; I rested on Thursday and then went for a short (3.5 miles) run tonight; I'll be going to the gym tomorrow and aiming to run 10 miles or so on Sunday.

Of course, compared to Amy (who is on her 53rd and last marathon tomorrow (27th September 2014) in Manchester) 21 miles looks pretty unimpressive; but for me it was a major achievement.

In honour of this, and since it was Amy that inspired me to run so far, I have decided that I will run the Manchester marathon next year and will raise funds for the same cause that Amy is running for (the Isabelle Lottie foundation). 

If you'd like to donate to the foundation for Amy (and boy does she deserve it), you can find a BT giving page here: https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/53marathons

We have a barbecue (almost certainly the last one of the year) tomorrow with Saira and her VSO. Some innocent songs will no doubt be subject to sonic abuse again....