marathonmummy

I hope you’ve all had a lovely time. I was slightly shamed to look out of the bedroom window at 7.30 on Christmas Day to see someone running past, but I think a Boxing Day run almost makes up for it.

So, on Christmas Eve eve, aka the 23rd, I had my one on one Pilates session with Marcin at the gym. If I tell you that I’m still aching now, four days later, that’ll give you an idea of how hard it was. I did a warm up on the cross trainer, then we went through a series of cruel and unusual punishments exercises designed to strengthen my core, and hopefully address my lopsidedness.

This exercise, called the Pilates Hundred, is a warm up. Hahahahaha! I was just about crying. The rest of the exercises can be found here and I’m hoping that I’m going to end up with a core of steel as a result of doing them. I really admire people who have personal trainers now I’ve had a go – I can see how they get results. Unlike a class, where you can hide at the back and giggle with your friends when you can’t do any more crunches, there’s nowhere to hide.

Unfortunately we didn’t get out on Christmas eve – Zoe’s journey took forever due to the snow and ice, and so we went out yesterday for a 5 mile runwalk which was still slightly treacherous because the country lanes hadn’t been gritted and there were still patches of ice lurking around. We met lots of walkers out burning off their Christmas dinner – it’s quite satisfying to overtake people, and makes you keep going when you were actually planning a walk break. We realised that our running pace is pretty much identical, which is a good thing – we kept the run at a really gentle pace to make sure we could keep going for longer. Then we’d choose a fixed point and run as fast as we could to it, then walk to recover. We were planning another run today but Zoe has developed a horrible cold so we’ll have to leave it now till we get together at the end of January for our next training weekend.

Meanwhile I’m having one more day of eating chocolate and yummy leftovers before it’s back to Operation Get Superfit because I have a week’s skiing coming up.

One hour one on one pilates lesson = owwwww!

Everything aches but in a very good way. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a million presents to wrap. More later.

I guess for every good run there’s a crappy one.

run run
oh help need to wrap presents and my shin hurts
run run
haven’t made pastry for mince pies yet
run run
must get the other part of Zoe’s present
walk walk
help I have no energy
run run
must do some work to earn money for skiing holiday
walk walk
I hate running, why am I running a marathon?
run run
I hate this song
run run
I hate treadmills
walk walk
I want to stop and lie down
run run
urgh, this is hopeless
stop

at least I ran though; I guess that’s something. But sometimes it’s really hard, running when you just want to lie down on the couch and watch television.

I saw my lovely chiropractor, Sarah Richards, last week (find her here at the Isis Chiropractic Clinic). My back is doing well (must do more core strength stuff though) and I arranged to have a gait analysis session with Marcin, who runs their rehabilitation gym. So on Saturday morning I left all the children behind and drove through the snow to be poked and prodded. I thought it would be a quick run on the treadmill, but it lasted a whole hour and was incredibly thorough.

I warmed up for 15 minutes on the cross trainer, then ran on the treadmill whilst M looked at my gait. After a while, he told me he could tell I’d broken or badly sprained my right ankle at some point, and that I was tight in my left shoulder and neck. Spooky. Apparently whereas my left foot runs straight, my right swings in a little. And my shoulder has been stiff for a couple of weeks now, which he says is connected to my ongoing back problem, and an increase in the amount of time I’m running.

Next I did squats, side reaches whilst kneeling, lay on my back and held my knees to my chest, and all of these helped him to build a picture of my poor disaster-prone body. I’m all lopsided, thanks to a fall from a horse at the age of 11 which damaged my back. I have to work on my core strength, I need to get my side muscles (they have a name, but I can’t remember what it is!) strong and balanced, and I need to strengthen my glutes. Marcin is an ex-Olympic athlete who ran long distance, so I felt a bit of a fraud twittering about wanting to shuffle round the marathon and make it in one piece, but he was really helpful and has given me lots to work on, because he wants me to finish in good shape, not falling to bits and unable to walk. I’m going in tomorrow for a one-on-one Pilates session where he’s going to give me some things to work on over Christmas.

Meanwhile, my plans for running outside as much as possible have been thwarted by the snow and ice, not that I’m complaining – we so rarely have a white Christmas that it’s a novelty for us, as you can see here.