The Begining - Holidays July 2014

I use the term "holidays" loosely, gone are the days when being on holiday meant doing pretty much nothing, these days having a "rest" day causes all sorts of panicky thoughts, like "will I loose my fitness"? "how many calories am I allowed for my tea before I start inflating like a balloon"?

I think its right that I should use this "holiday" time to reflect on where I've come from and where I'm aiming to be, Si's suggested blogging as a way of reminding yourself of what worked and what didn't, so that you can look back and try and put things right. So I'll start at the beginning.

I started running about 3 years ago, very slowly but I love it, I really didn't have any sort of plan to my training, just put my shoes on, run to work and try and run faster each time then at the weekend do a longer run. In November 2013 this all changed and for some unknown, insane, reason I decided to enter the Conway half marathon, with very little time to train beforehand I managed to complete it in 2hrs 52mins, brilliant course, up and around the Great Orme in Llandudno.  I started off with Lucie (who'd talked me into doing the race in the first place) and soon realised that I was running her race and not my own, (advise from the Morley, running with somebody is fab but just be careful that you run your own race and not theirs), so I told Lucie to carry on and I backed off to a pace that I was much more comfortable with, we'd just started to come into Llandudno and not even hit the Orme when I started struggling with the hill, it was always going to be about just getting round but I honestly thought I wouldn't have to walk so early, whatever I didn't panic, put my head down and did it, my fear is always that I'm going to come last but I knew there were people behind me, not many but a few!! Coming down the Orme was brilliant, I passed so many people and just couldn't understand why they would be walking downhill (Christine pointed out to me later that people do train on going uphill but now coming down, they tend to use the down hills as recovery and walk, good theory)!! I had terribly tummy issue's as we got back into Conway and felt awful for the rest of that day and into the night, didn't really enjoy my fray bentos pie either!! I learnt a lot about myself that day but more importantly I learned that its not enough just to get out there and do it, if I'm going to enter races I want to do the best I can and certainly not come last, enter Si with a training plan.