The Countdown Begins, 4 weeks to go!

Oh my, the real countdown begins! It is just under four weeks till the half marathon, and I’m absolutely bricking it. I have never really run in my life and I’m about to embark on running 13.1 miles…I’m absolutely mental and it's bloody hard work, but I love it.

Due to my training schedule over the next four weeks I will hopefully see myself at the healthiest I have ever been. I’ll be covering between 30 – 40K a week, fine tuning my diet, keeping very hydrated and bouncing around off the endorphin's.

My evenings this week are going to look like this:

Monday – 10K

Tuesday – REST DAY (house cleaning day)

Wednesday – Cross Training for increased stamina / fitness; 2 hours 30 mins on the Cross Trainer

Thursday – REST DAY (hot bath, paint nails)

Friday – 14K

Saturday – 8K

Sunday – 40 minute swim (to stretch out the other muscles)

To fuel those days, and typical ‘eating’ day for me looks like this;

Breakfast – Porridge (made with water) and a yoghurt stirred in.

Lunch – Chunky Chicken and Veggie soup

Snack – 2 boiled eggs & an apple or orange

Dinner – Roasted Chicken with Salad, humus and a whole meal pitta bread

Drinks – 1 coffee, 3-4 herbal teas, 6 pints of water ( lots of trips to the toilets).

I’m also trying to listen to all my favourite albums to work out which tracks I want to accompany me around the route. If you have any song suggestions please let me know.

In addition to this all, I’m fighting off  the sniffles, which is making it a tad harder to breath whilst running when I start, but once I’ve warmed up it tends to settle.

So wish me luck for this week, I’ll be updating the blog a little more frequently as the race gets closer :-). 

Slowly starting to love...

Hello – a little side note before I get into my ramblings. Sorry for the lack of posts, work has been busy and we’ve had a very very busy (& super fun!) summer, which is only just dying down. Now we've reached September and back into the swing of routine that September provides (even though no one in my immediate family runs on an academic calendar, I think it’s just programmed into our head from when we were children).

In a complete contrast to my post on the 7^th August, claiming I AM NOT A RUNNER – the last four weeks has seen a sudden turn of events in my running status. With just under 5 weeks to go to the half marathon I’ve only gone and fallen in love with the sport. My PE teacher would be so proud, gone are the days from ‘forgetting my sports bag’ to get out of exercise, to choosing on my own will to run 3-4 times a week.

I think (though I still don’t quiet feel like it) I AM A RUNNER – I’ve put it in a small font, as I’m just whispering about it at the moment, as some of the ‘real’ runners out may think I don’t quiet qualify.

I’m not a very good “runner”; the runs are slow, sweaty and hard – but I’m enjoying them and as soon as I’m finished with one run I’m planning the next one. I never ever thought I’d see the day that I look forward to exercise and plan my schedule around it, but the time has come. I  am embracing, loving and enjoying running.

I am also immensely enjoying the benefits of running;

• I’ve lost weight pretty effortlessly, which probably makes the runs easier and dieting is one less thing to worry about (unfortunately in today’s society it's every females unwanted hobby). 
• My skin is looking pretty good at the moment because I’m sweating out all the rubbish out of it.
• I’m toning up and finally the ‘blob’ that was my body is producing some kind of shape – though because of the legs tonning up quicker than any other part, it’s a little lollipop-ed shaped at the moment, though any shape is a step up from ‘blob’.
• I CAN EAT CARBS AND NOT FEEL GUILTY – this is probably the BEST benefit ever. I said previously that after the half marathon I’m going to give up running, but now that I’m liking running and I can eat carbs and not feel guilty about it I may just carry on. Life is so much better with pasta and potatoes.
• I feel SO ALIVE at the end of runs, not matter how long or short - I feel like I can face anything and take on the world (this feeling doesn't last too long, as usually when I get home I face a pile of never-ending laundry, that doesn't ever seem to be conquered).
• A combination of all the above and the endorphin's means I'm less stressed. I'm getting my 'me' time whilst running and it gives me times to think about things in life that I don't usually have time too, and also come to peace with a lot of internal conflicts. 

So happy running for now :-)

Family and FitBit

I count myself very lucky, I have a big, wonderfully, loving family – the kind who you would choose to be your friends. There are six  special members, who are outside of my immediate family are one of my biggest supporters in everything I wish to do (except for when I ran away from home when I was younger - they sent me back). They are my beloved Uncle Stephen, Aunt Mariam, Chris, Jess, Mylie and Humphrey (the dog).

The Old Couple

Their little terrors

Uncle Stephen has been spoiling me since I can remember – he’d buy me expensive French dresses, porcelain dolls, sweets, teddy bears, toys etc. there was definitely some favouritism going on (though he still claims to love us all equally).  He has been spoiling me ever since, and my lovely Aunt Mariam carried on the tradition when they met and married, which was a huge relief, as I feared he might forget about me (though now I have to share the ‘spoiling’ with their three apples of their eyes).

My FitBit - and loom band that Mylie
and Jess made me for my birthday

So just like the last 24  years, this year for my birthday I was spoilt by them too; they got me a FitBit Flex. I’ve been wanting one for a while, and suspected that I might open one up on my birthday, but if I didn’t I was going to treat myself to one. The FitBit Flex is a device you wear on your wrist (like a bracelet or watch), which tracks your movement 24 hours a day; including sleep patterns. It has a display of 5 LED lights, each light indicates 20% of a goal you want to reach for the day. The default setting is 10,000 steps a day (which is just under 5 miles), and when gentle tapped the lights indicate how far you’ve got towards your goal for the day e.g. 4,500 steps – 2 lights (and the 3^rd one flashes, to show that you’re working towards lighting up the next 20% of your goal). It’s waterproof; so you can wear it in the shower – so it really doesn’t need to be taken off at all, except for when it needs charging – the battery lasts around 6 days, and takes a couple of hours to charge.

I particularly wanted the Fit Bit as it works with My Fitness Pal – as I;m a Monday – Friday calorie counter,  it helps me work out how many calories have gone in (taking data from MFP), and then works out how many calories have gone out. So each day you are left with your deficit for the day – great if your losing weight, as it keeps you on track. It also syncs with your smart phone via Bluetooth, so at any time of the day or night you can open up the app and see exactly how many steps you’ve taken, how many calories burnt, how many active minutes you’d had etc…

I’ve been wearing the FitBit Flex for just over a week now, and I’ve realised that pre-fitbit I was bloody lazy. I wasn’t lazy when I was running or at the gym obviously, but my day-to-day activities were very sedentary.

Getting the lights to shine adds a sense of game-ification (except you are the only one in the game – though you can challenge other friends who have one - I’m yet to know a friend of mine who has one).  You also earn badges along the way, so you get one for the first 5,000 steps you do (that’s an easy one), then for the first 10,00 steps you do in one day, then for the first time you do 15,000 steps in one day etc. You also get badges for the number of miles you walk in total, and last week I earned my 50 mile badge – yes I walked / jog / ran 50 miles in one week (I’d like to thank a weekend in Paris for that). If you’ve read my earlier post you’ll know I like goals, so these badges work as little goals for me to set for myself. These badges work as a great motivator for me, actually just having the flex on my wrist works as a great motivator; as every time I look at my wrist it’s a little reminder that I need to move some more.

The online dashboard is helpful & fun too – as it tracks you every day, and puts things into nice little pie and bar charts. As I’m a bit of a Geek I love seeing all my stats laid out there.  You can set all sorts of different goals, and check in every day to see how close you are to them, and get a weekly view too (I actually think I walked more on Sunday than any other day, but the battery died half way through the day).

As I was planning on buying one myself, I read a lot of reviews on the FitBit Flex and it’s other competitors that are currently in the market place. Most reviewers complained it wasn’t accurate enough, but that seemed to be their complaint about all of them – complaining that it can be too sensitive and tracks brushing your teeth or typing as steps, (due to the wrist movement). Unless they strap something to your legs, you’re probably not going to get much more accurate that this for now, plus just like the calories I count on My Fitness Pal, it’s a rough estimation, which is fine with me.

If you are using one and want to get become my 'fitbit' friend; let me know so we can challenge each other. 

The first four...

If  you follow me on Twitter you would have known that from Monday 14^th July 2014 things got serious – serious in the sense that it’s just over 12 weeks to the half marathon. 12 weeks seems like ages right? That’s a whole 3 months, a quarter of the year, plenty of time to build up to 13.1 miles. But a big lesson I've learnt about turning a year older, is that time flies by…like literally you blink and it’s the next month (what happened to June?).

So it's time to step up the training, form a routine training plan and give up alcohol (except for my four scheduled alcohol-allowed events; this weekend, Machofest, Kyle’s birthday and Carnival), the rest of the time I shall be T-Total (and probably quiet grumpy and boring on weekends now).

The Training Plan:

I’m using a mix of training plans I've found online and fitting them in between my body pump classes (as we've got to keep the muscles strong and lean right?). As it’s just over 12 weeks, and I’m away this weekend (it’s a surprise trip, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to go for a run whilst I’m away, hence the '?' in my plan) I shall be repeating week 1 twice – it will also help build  the plan into my routine that I have to stick to for 12 weeks. I’m notoriously bad at sticking to things, so hopefully shouting out about this on my blog means that it’s making me accountable for it, and I have to do it, plus its for charity and I’m running with a team, and I've told loads of people, and spent a lot of money on running shoes etc, etc.

Monday's are the toughest day, and I originally had the 30 minute easy run on a Tuesday, but trying to move the day after a Body Pump session can be tough (I barely make it up the stairs at work), so I've put my two rest days the days after body pump. It's also an easy run on the Monday (as legs are still recovering from Sunday's long run), so I can do it just before my body pump class on the treadmill, in the comfort of an air conditioned gym.

As I have created the plan, and I’m not a fitness expert I shall be changing and adapting it as I see fit (with the 13.1 mile goal in mind). I should probably run this past someone who knows what they are doing; so if you are an experienced runner/athlete/personal trainer who is reading this and can see massive flaws in the plan – give me  a shout.

I’m not going to bore you with the full 12 week plan so far (partly because it scares me a little to look at the full 12 weeks at once), so I’m just going to post the first four weeks on here.

Want to join me? I mainly run just after work around 6:30 / 7pm in East Oxford - so drop me an email / comment / tweet and we can meet up :).

I'm still Standing, well running....

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and I’m going to use the lame excuse of not having enough time,  which I hate as an excuse. Everyone has the same amount of hours in the day, choosing how you spend them is what makes it matter. With that in mind, I have been choosing how to spend my hours not updating my blog, as I thought generally no one really cared about, but lately a lot of people have been asking ‘what happened?’, ‘are you still running the half marathon?’, ‘how’s the training going?’. So I thought I’d give you an little update with what is going on.

I genuinely thought no one read my blog, or cared that I was pounding the pavements, eating healthy and generally improving my well-being; aren’t we all trying to achieve that? – so I thought this ole’ blogging malarkey was fairly boring to the reader. But then I realised that it’s a bit like a newsletter (or extra-long facebook status) for your family and friends, to inform them of what exactly you are getting up too; especially the ones who are a little far afield and we don’t have that much time to catch up with.

So, YES – I am still running a half marathon, I have signed up, I have told people, I've even encouraged a whole team of 8 of us in the office to run with me for charity, there seems to be no turning back, I’m in this for the long run (pun intended).

The Beautifully Flat Dorney Lake

Training is happening, though the schedule at the moment is not very structured - and with the crazy amounts of pollen this year, training shifted to the treadmill for a while. But thanks to Boots and a new anti-hestamine I am back in the great outdoors. With 3 months to go I’m having to devise a more structured (but not too boring) training plan that will get me to the finish line. So from this Saturday we are in full time half marathon training mode (FTHMTM). FTHMTM starts with a 10K jog on Saturday morning, around Dorney Lake, which is twice around the lake, it’s a nice flat, scenic route and a great way to start a birthday weekend.

How are you kicking off your weekend?

Focus, Focus, Focus

It’s been a bit quiet on here; which either means I’ve given up and failed completely or life has been so busy that I have not had time to update my going-ons. Fortunately it has been the latter.

Last week at work was hellish and super busy, lots of late finishes in the office, lacking in energy, not exercising and making bad unhealthy choices – also known as falling off the wagon.  But now I find myself in the middle of a new week, 2 workouts in and lots of healthy clean eating back on the cards – officially back on the wagon.

‘Falling off the wagon’ comes round a little too easy; there are many triggers that can cause a fall. As I’m starting my health journey, clean eating and training had been one of my main focuses; but as a busy week at work was brought on by  a looming deadline at work, my overall focus for the week was the project I was working on in the office, and not my training plan. This temporary focus then caused me to take a step back from my loving friends and family that are my support system, as I was too stressed to have proper chats with them and reach out to them.

So with one little trigger of work; it became a tumble weed of other excuses. With 5 months to the half marathon I can’t be losing my focus on running too often, so from today I pledge to make healthy eating and half marathon training my main focus in life, finding time and not having lots of excuses. I'll update you later in the week on how I am planning to stay focused in more details. 

1 hour is only 4% of your day.