JogBlog running blog

Eight weeks ago I started a 12 week half-marathon training schedule, extending it to 19 weeks, so if I had to skip a run or two, I could repeat that week. I was doing really well up to week 7; I hadn’t skipped a single day but then at the end of week 7, I was supposed to do a 7 mile run. I hadn’t done a 7 mile run since the first time I trained for the Royal Parks Half back in 2008 and so that wasn’t a run to be skipped.

But I skipped it.

Oops.

But I have excuses! Of course I have excuses, don’t I always? My excuse is that I had a 5k the day before and therefore needed to rest the day after, plus before I did the 5k, I did body pump for the first time in three weeks and man, did I ache the next day.

That was a week ago and I haven’t really done any running since, except for a 4.27 mile run last Tuesday that was practically at walking pace. What happened to the 9:48 minute miles I’d done just a few days previously?

Bah.

Last Saturday’s scheduled 8 miles was postponed due to going to Hyde Park to meet up with some of my fellow Juneathoners for our post-Juneathon picnic (four of them were hardcore enough to have a run first. Abradypus was extra hardcore, having already done a Park Run and then running from Liverpool Street to Hyde Park. Me, I sat down, opened a can of Pimms and tucked into the stuffed vine leaves and hummous).

This morning, I didn’t have the energy to catch up on one of my missed long runs. I didn’t even have the energy to do the 5 miles it had on my schedule for today, so I decided to do some intervals, incorporating them into a 3 mile run.

So that’s what I did.

This weekend, I’ll have to catch up on my missed miles and go for a 7 miler. In the meantime, tonight I’m going to Talking Twitter with Grace Dent and tomorrow I’m having one of my short stories read out at Are You Sitting Comfortably, a local event organised by White Rabbit.

See that bit where it says “an evening of short stories written by local writers”? That’s me, that is!

I may be a bit excited.

Stats
Distance: 3.02 miles
Time: 34:43
Pace: 11:30 m/m
Calories: 317
post-Juneathon picnics: 1
Long runs skipped: 2
Mes a bit excited: 1

Yesterday I cycled down to Woodchurch to have a look at the Windmill there. It’s a very nice windmill and I took lots of photos, like this one

which was brazenly stolen from my Facebook page by Fitographer who doctored it in Photoshop and said, hey, look what I did to your photo (or words to that effect) and this is what he did

and I was so impressed with what he did to my photo that I made it into my Facebook profile picture but that was yesterday and today I ran(ish) 4.2 miles.

Stats
Cycling:
Distance: 10.73 miles
Time: 1:08:09
Speed: 9.4 mph
Calories: 326
Windmills: 1
Windmill photos stolen and improved: 1

Running
Distance: 4.27 miles
Time: slow
Pace: slow
Calories: 406

And so… on the 31st day of Juneathon, I cycled to the gym, did twenty minutes on the rowing machine, fifteen minutes on the stationary bike, a forty-five minute body pump class, cycled back home, submitted a story for a local event, started writing an article for submission to a magazine, went downstairs to read a book in the conservatory where I promptly fell asleep as it’s so warm in there, got woken up when Shaun came in who asked if I still wanted to do the 5k, as he didn’t really want to do it as he was knackered from cycling to and from work all week, but I wanted to do it because it was local and because I’ve never done a properly measured 5k before and because it was a lovely sunny evening and it was being held in a nice park and so we drove over to the park where there was a girl in her underwear and men doing stretches and things, i.e. proper athletes, and so I held off from entering as there were only a few people there and after seeing the results for Staplehurst 10k where the final finisher finished in only 1 hour and 12 minutes, I was scared I’d be last but we paid our entry fee and the race director said to me oh Cathy, we’ve got the medals now if you want one and I said for the Hamstreet race? and he said yes and I thought how does he know who I am and I said did you see it on my blog? and he said yes, it’s a good blog and I said thank you and thought, yay, I’m famous and then Shaun wanted to go to the toilet but the toilets were closed even though the race organisers had organised for them to be open and so we drove back home again and went to the toilet then drove back to the race and there were a couple of women carrying pink water bottles and I thought surely I can beat women who carry pink water bottles round a 5k and I set Cedric to pace me for 11 minute miles although I thought this was probably a bit optimistic, given my current running speed and we all walked up to the start and I said to Shaun I think it’s a couple of laps round the park and a man next to us said yes, it’s a couple of laps and I said I’ll follow you then if you know the way, how fast do you go and he said oh, only 17 minutes and I think only? and I say, I’m not following you then and then the race started and it started on a nice downhill bit and everyone sprinted off and then I slowed down and fell into a consistent pace and I kept ahead of Cedric all the way and there were marshals in all the right places except for the one in the middle of the slightly slopey bit really big hill as I don’t like to walk past marshals and so I had to run up the really big hill so as not to look like a lightweight in front of the marshal and the last two miles were spent behind a man who seemed to be plodding gently along and I overtook him for a bit then with .4 miles to go he steamed ahead of me for his final sprint and I thought I’m not going to try and catch you up as that really big hill is just around the corner and as I get to the hill for the second and final time one of the women with the pink water bottles is just behind me and I think fuck, I’m going to be beaten by a woman with a pink water bottle and I wonder if I sprint off will she decide to  pick me off and sprint past me and I get to the final downhill bit and I run and I run and I run and I get through the finish line and a man puts a medal round my neck and I’ve done my fastest 5k ever ever ever and I go and get a Jaffa Cake and say to Shaun shall we go now and he says let’s wait for the prizes shall we? there can’t be many more to finish and the last finisher comes in and we go to the prize-giving thingy and the race director gives the prizes to the overall winners and then he gives out the prizes to the category winners and he calls Shaun’s name out and I give a sharp intake of breath and Shaun says what? who? me? really? and the race director says yes, you and so Shaun goes and gets his prize which is a bottle of wine and although he hates wine he says I can’t have it because he won it and he’s never won anything before and then we go home very very happy.

Stats
Distance: 3.19 miles
Time: 31:16
Pace: 9:48 m/m
Calories: 336
Days of Juneathon: 31
PBs: 1
Prize winning boyfriends: 1
People very happy: 2

Following yesterday’s mug and bowl dilemma (which didn’t happen today as my mug and bowl matched perfectly in doggy harmony),

today, upon looking at the table of doom (I’m not sure who coined that term, but thank you), I was in a bit of a quandary. I had 71 miles down, Hal wanted me to do 4.5 which would have taken me up to a nicely rounded 75 but I have a race tomorrow and didn’t want to be too tired for it (not that it makes a difference. Last is last, no matter what time you do it in). I did have it in my head to beat Travelling Hopefully (purely in a ‘girl in front of me in a race that I’ve chosen to pick out and overtake’ kind of way) as she was on 73 miles but I didn’t know how many miles she was going to do today.

The ‘overtaking Travelling Hopefully’ plan was further thwarted by Cassie popping up on Twitter to say she’d Juneathoned. Aha! I thought. I can casually ask how many miles she’s done and then do more and she will never know that I’ve set out to beat her.

‘I did 3 miles but I haven’t logged for ages. I think I’ve done 101 so far.’

Well, that buggered up my plan then, didn’t it?

Bah.

I get very discombobulated when plans go awry (as you may have noticed from yesterday’s post) and so I sulked for a bit on Twitter until thereisasixpackunderhere popped up and said I could do 73 miles as that’s a prime number.

I wasn’t very keen on this as I don’t like odd numbers (although 75 is an odd number, but at least it’s a nice round odd number) but then I thought to myself that as ‘prime’ is a euphemism for ‘old’ (i.e. someone over 40) and therefore I am in my prime (i.e. old), at least it will make a good blog title and so 73 it was to be.

First though, I had to go and investigate what exactly a prime number was. Wikipedia told me that it was a number over 1 that can’t be divisible by anything other than itself. Hmm, surely that’s all odd numbers then, I thought as I went through a quick list of odd numbers in my head. So, off I went back to Wikipedia’s list of prime numbers and lo! I didn’t have to go far through the list until I got to number 9 and even I know that that can be divided by 3. Go me, master mathematician.

So, having got the ‘what the fuck is a prime number?’ question sorted, I set off for my last Juneathon run. As I was only doing two miles, I decided to do Audiofuel’s Pyramid Max 180 intervals and as there’s two miles of closed off road just over the road, that was the perfect place to do it.

And so that’s the end of Juneathon 2011 (except I’ve got a race tomorrow so June for me this year would appear to have 31 days in it).

Thank you to everyone who’s taken part and made it what it is: a brilliant supportive community of bloggers, making Juneathon whatever they want it to be.

I’m sure you all know who’s ‘won’ this year, as he got to finish a day ahead of us, what with him being in Australia and that. Usually, that would put someone at a disadvantage, as then we’ve got time to catch up, but as he’s 144 miles ahead of the runner in second place, I’m not sure this will happen.

So, well done Auswomble, 404 miles is amazing! 

As for me, I jogged, logged and blogged every day. Ok, so a couple of ‘runs’ were round the garden (not in my dressing gown this time; one of the times was even in my running kit), and quite a few runs were only .75 miles but I’ve hardly ever run two days in a row, let alone 30, so I am quite pleased with that.

Look, my SportTracks calendar is all filled in

unlike January’s, where I was a bit of a slacker.

I don’t want this blog post to end, as then I will feel like Juneathon really is over. Boo hoo.

Oh well, here come the

Stats
Distance: 2.01 miles
Time: 22:08
Pace: 11 m/m
Calories: 211

Juneathon totals:
Running
Days: 30/30
Distance: 73.2 miles
Time: 15.2 hours

Cycling
Distance: 64.3 miles
Time: 6.9 hours

Cross-training
Time: 4.7 hours

Total (from SportTracks, seem to be a bit different than RFO)
Distance: 141.57
Time: 27:02:44
Calories: 11,476

We have riveting conversations in this house. Like, who gets to eat the last banana? I said it should be me because I was going to the gym and needed a banana smoothie beforehand and Shaun thought it should be him because he eats the exact same food items every single day, except for his evening meal, where he usually gets something different every single day, as I do most of the cooking.

But then I remembered my new animal bowls and so I thought ‘aha, I can have cereal and use one of my new bowls, hooray’ and so I relented and let Shaun have the last banana.

So, this morning, after I’d had my tea, I merrily skipped off to the kitchen to choose which animal bowl I was going to use.

Aarrgghh, dilemma! Because there’s been a huge demand for pig and cat bowls, Shaun couldn’t get me a full set, and so I didn’t have the corresponding pig bowl to go with the pig mug I had already used for my tea

but as I have all my animal mugs lined up in a row on the kitchen windowsill, I looked to see what tomorrow’s mug will be (they get used in the order they are on the windowsill, with no deviation allowed; accidental deviation occurred a few weeks ago and we couldn’t come to an agreement on how to reset the system; I wanted to start again from the beginning,  Shaun said I should, the following week, skip the one I had used twice. [A photo has been taken  now of the order they’re in and no more deviation can take place]) and tomorrow’s mug is the dog mug

and hurrah, one of the two new bowls was the dog bowl (it has just occurred to me that tomorrow I will be eating out of a dog bowl, hmm)

and so although today was quite stressful what with having to eat my cereal out of a horse bowl

when I’d drunk my tea out of a pig mug, at least equilibrium will be restored tomorrow.

Phew.

Luckily there were no more dilemmas to tax my brain on the way to the gym (although my jaw dropped a bit as I overtook a woman yelling at her daughter that she was a ‘thickhead’) and I got there early and went on the rowing machine and a fake-tanned peroxide-headed girl came in wearing sunglasses. Not normal glasses that react and might have gone dark in the bright light but proper big oversized chavvy ones. Still wearing her oversized sunglasses, she plonked her oversized handbag on the floor, laid down on the exercise mat, did about three sit-ups, got up, picked up her bag and wandered off.

I did my spin class with a surprising amount of energy (must be true what they say then about needing fuel to exercise), then got on the treadmill to do Thru the Gears and managed to go faster and faster right ‘til the very end (ok, the very end is only about 13 minutes away from the beginning but I usually slack off and walk for a bit before speeding up again).

After I’d finished on the treadmill, I went back into the changing rooms where there were two young boys about five years old sitting on the bench. I was cycling back in my gym gear so it wasn’t much of a problem, although I wasn’t completely happy about there being young boys in there. But if I had wanted to get changed, I’d have had to go into a cubicle as I wouldn’t have wanted to strip in front of them. When I got home, I asked on Twitter if people thought it was ok to have boys in the changing room and 99% said yes (unsurprisingly, they were all female parents) and although the majority were against me, the more I thought about it, the more I thought no, they shouldn’t have been there. My gym has brilliant facilities and there is a crèche for them to use and as children don’t go in the gym, if they’d been in the swimming pool, then they should have used the swimming pool changing rooms which are communal and no nudity is allowed outside the cubicles. So, if these parents think it’s ok for young boys to be in a room where there are women changing, it must be ok for their young daughters to also be in a room where there are men changing? I’m pretty sure most blokes wouldn’t want to strip off in front of a five year old girl.

Weird.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 5 miles
Time: 30 minutes
Speed: 10mph

Rowing machine
20 minutes

Spin
Time: 45 minutes

Treadmill
Distance: 1.22 miles
Time: 14:31

Travelling Hopefully (Cassie) and Rich are currently on their yearly camping holiday to somewhere near Dymchurch (my first words on meeting Rich were ‘Ooh, you’re taller than I expected!’. Why can’t I just say ‘Hello, nice to meet you’, like a normal person would?) and so as Shaun and I are only a few miles away, we arranged to meet up at the Blue Anchor in Ruckinge for dinner (Helen was also supposed to be there but had to pull out, unfortunately).

All the meals in the Blue Anchor come with salad or vegetables and a choice of potato. We all chose chips. In our defence, we did also all choose salad too. Cassie and Rich had been warned about the stupidly big portions the pub serves, but they still weren’t prepared for the mountain of food that the waitress placed in front of them (especially Rich’s inch thick piece of ham). The waitress forgot Cassie’s chips, but that was just as well as between us, we left enough chips to feed the population of Ashford for a few days.

At the end of the evening, Shaun gave Cassie and Rich a lift back to their campsite and just after dropping them off, a hare scampered across the road. I’ve never seen a hare before and gave a sharp intake of breath and exclaimed ‘What was that?’ I didn’t know hares were the size of foxes, I thought they were the same as rabbits but with longer ears. Yes, I am stupid.

A couple of miles on down the road more sharp intakes of breath could be heard as suicidal rabbits ran out in the road in front of the car, although Shaun reckoned it was the same rabbit taking shortcuts through the fields just to run out in front of us again. I’m not sure he is to be believed though as what was a ten minute journey on the way to the pub, turned into a half hour journey on the way back due to Shaun ignoring my ‘Why don’t you just go back the way we came?’ remark and going on a detour down to Dymchurch where I didn’t even get to see the sea but had to endure more twisty and turny narrow country lanes at a speed faster than I’m happy with, despite my pleas of ‘please slow down’.

Still, we eventually got back safe and sound and with all the carbs from the pasta, chips and lager, I didn’t think I had much choice but to stick to my schedule this morning and go out for 4.5 miles.

It was boiling when I went out and so I put on a vest top instead of one of my usual t-shirts and laughed inwardly at a) the runner running in long baggy trousers; b) the scruffy man looking at the horses by the vets wearing jeans and a jacket; and c) the man in a suit and tie cycling down the dual carriageway and I wondered if I was hallucinating the sunshine and if they were all laughing at me for being underdressed but after about three miles, the rain started to wash off the sun lotion I had applied (although how effective it will be, being about ten years old, I’m not sure) and as just as I got back inside the front door, the promised storm arrived so maybe they were dressed appropriately after all.

Stats
Distance: 4.19 miles
Time: slow
Pace: slow
Calories: 390
Chips: billions 
Sunshines: 1
Storms: 1

And it makes me smile.

Before I went out on my ‘run’ today, I had the urge to listen to this

first which also further delayed my run as I knew it wasn’t on my iPod and so I had to find the CD and I found it eventually and whacked it up loud and then went for a run in the sun.

Stats
Distance: 0.73 miles
Time: 7:17
Pace: 9:58
Calories: 77
Suns: 1

I had planned to do the Staplehurst 10k this morning but after a pretty rubbish night’s sleep, I decided that my current mileage and pace wasn’t really up to a 10k and Shaun didn’t really fancy it either and so I slacked off the 10k and went out to do the 5k that was on my schedule instead.

Seeing how slow my 5k was, it was just as well I slacked off the 10k, as shortly after I got back, the 10k results were posted and as the last runner took 1:12 and only a few took over an hour, I’d have been last for sure.

Stats
Distance: 3.1 miles
Time: a long time
Pace: slow
Calories: 353
10ks done: 0
Really slow 5ks done: 1

Today’s excuse for only running .75 miles is that I’m doing the Staplehurst 10k tomorrow and nothing to do with the amount I drank last night.

Stats
Distance: 0.75 miles
Time: 7:33
Pace: 10:00 m/m
Races tomorrow: 1
Amount I drank last night: lots

I was out seeing Knifeworld last night and knew today’s Juneathon effort would be a bit poor, due to not getting in ‘til after 1am. I wasn’t so drunk I can’t remember a) wobbling home on my bike (although I had gone about a mile before thinking ‘hmm, maybe I should put my lights on); and b) shutting the cat’s tail in the door when I got in but I was pissed enough to not bother getting dressed ‘til 3:30 this afternoon when I eventually put on my running gear to…

…run round the garden.

I know! It’s pathetic and I had planned to do my little .75 route but I couldn’t be bothered and for some reason letting the decorators who are currently stripping the paint from the outside of the pub across the road see me run for all of eight minutes seemed worse than letting my neighbours see me run round the garden, picking up feathers on the way, complete in running kit for about one minute.

Still, it’s a Juneathon effort and I’m in charge and I say it counts, so there.

Oh, the socks. Yes. Here they are.

Aren’t they lovely? I won Millie’s competition to guess her time at the Great Manchester Run and she knitted me these socks. They’ve got a heel and everything and I’m going to wear them tonight when iliketocount and I go out for our anniversary meal.

Thanks Millie!

Stats
Distance: 0.03 miles
Time: 1:07
Feathers: 3
Pairs of socks: 1
Anniversary meals: 1