marathonmummy

I know, I should have written before now. And yes, I should have done some running. But it is TOO HOT and I am British and we don’t do hot weather well. It’s not just hot, it’s muggy and sticky and close and horrible, and yes it is all of those things at 5am as well, so I’m not making excuses. Well, maybe I am a little bit.

So instead I shall tell you that my little sister and fellow marathon runner-to-be ran-walked 3 miles the other day (in her air conditioned gym, I add enviously).  And yes, we both said ‘eek, we’d have to do that more than 8 times to run a whole marathon’.

Up at six, dressed, shoo children back to bed, let dog out, check kittens, let chickens out. Grab stopwatch and go.

3 minutes walk warm up, then 1 minute run, 2 minute walk – repeat 5 times.

Home, drink water, shower. Listen to children squabbling over who has the most cereal in their bowl. Hide in sitting room doing blog update.

Must run, have to get faces washed, hair brushed, bags organised, etc etc.

Jessica, my super-inspiring marathon running wondergoddess friend (can you tell I’m a fan?) is going to go running with me next week. She’s had some time away from her trainers, because life and children do tend to get in the way, but she went out today and managed a (no doubt speedier than I could do with a rocket up my bum) nifty 20 minutes. So, because the Other Runner in the house maintains that a bit of company will push me on to greater heights, we’re going to go running together next week.

Bear in mind that Jessica looks like a marathon runner – she is lithe, and toned, and willowy. I am, er, not. But I will be by next April.

Watch this space.

Day one of doing it properly.

The fact that it’s beautiful at 5am does help to make getting up bearable. Sun sparkling on dew, rabbits playing on the verge, lambs skipping, la la la. And me thundering along terrifying them all into thinking there’s an earthquake.

I read The Book again last night, and remembered that there’s a reason it’s the no.1 running book on Amazon – it’s so inspiring, and makes running accessible to anyone, even me. So instead of trying to run before I can walk (literally) I went back to the programme and this morning I did:

Warm up walk for 5 mins
Run 1m, walk 2m x 5
Brisk walk 10 mins.

That looks like a backward step, but I wasn’t jogging at a pace slower than my usual (fairly fast) walk, I was actually running at a decent speed. It’s easy to think I’m not going anywhere, but then I remember that it’s 16 years since I did any running, and apart from a brief flirtation with the gym when no1 child was a toddler, I haven’t done any real exercise for years. So it’ll take time, but I’ll get there.

So there I was, dining out (literally and metaphorically, which of course is part of the problem, oink oink) on my whole ten minutes of running, when I bumped into P the other day outside school. She too is running the marathon next year for charity, and when last we spoke we’d compared notes on the whole run-walk thing. Only now she’s running for A WHOLE HOUR. Even now, days later, when I write that my jaw drops open. An hour, as in sixty whole minutes of running, as in six times more than my miracle run of the other week. Gulp.

So of course, being fired up with the desire to astound everyone with my running prowess, I put on my trainers that night and ran for ages.

I didn’t really; I had a Chinese takeaway and a glass of wine and felt sorry for myself. However it did galvanise me to get The Book out and compare where I am now. My usual approach to these things (and by that I mean diets and fitness regimes as well as training plans to get me round the London Marathon) is to stick to it for precisely three days then think ‘oh, I’ll just vary it by doing x’ which invariably fails and then I end up drinking wine and eating Chinese food.

So. This weekend doesn’t count, because I’m home alone with the children whilst the currently injured Other Runner in the house visits the frozen north, but as of Monday morning it is Operation Get Off My Arse And Start Doing It Properly. No more one or two runs a week, but four. And no turning over at 5am and going back to sleep. If I don’t go out then, I’m going to have to go out in the daytime and if that doesn’t get me out of bed, nothing will. I have to run 26.2 miles in ten months, and people are going to be donating to Heart Research for the pleasure of watching me lumbering round London with a too-small vest on.

(Oh and hello to all the new readers I seem to have collected. It’s lovely to know that someone is out there reading this!)