Category: Running

I should have run today. My pathetic Janathon mileage is 22 miles running and so I was going to round it up to 25. But I didn’t. I’m still aching from Friday’s body pump (is it normal to be aching this long?) and will be going to running club tomorrow (possibly. Shaun’s just informed me that he’s not going. Bah.) and I don’t like to run two days in a row (so why have I just organised a daft running challenge that encourages people to run every day for 31 days? Don’t know.) and so I decided to cycle over to the donkeys and take their photo instead.

After I’d seen the donkeys I decided to explore a bit as it was a beautiful and sunny day. It was even warm enough for me to ditch my gloves.

I cycled through Bilsington and saw a pub, then I cycled through Ruckinge and saw another pub and then I came to a steep hill that I walked up.

Up this hill I saw a bunny, then round the corner I saw a load of chickens and TWO COWS. I like cows. Unfortunately the cows were too far away for me to take a photo.

Not much else of interest happened on my bike ride. I didn’t see any more cows or pubs, only sheep.

And now I’m at the part where I have to say thank you for participating in Janathon and that I hope you enjoyed it.

So, thank you for participating in Janathon and I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks to Joggerblogger for inventing Juneathon in the first place and thanks to Sean at Audiofuel for force-feeding me pizza until I agreed to organise the first ever Janathon and more thanks to Sean for donating the brilliant prize of a Garmin and Audiofuel compilations and even more thanks to Sean for his unending support and enthusiasm, as ever.

Thanks to Phil for his brilliant PR-ing and getting us the sponsorship from Talk Talk.

Thanks to Greg, Cass, Angela, Millie, Kaye, Pete, Jules, Helen, Steve, Ross, Susan, Katie and Kathryn for volunteering to be on blog-checking duty. That was a HUGE weight off my shoulders. I was about to have a nervous breakdown at that point.

More thanks to Jules who has been incredibly helpful throughout the month by helping people work out the Running Free website, putting the Janathon Daily together, putting all the blogs into a bundle for people to read on Google Reader, promoting Janathon in a podcast and tons of other stuff that I’ve forgotten about.

Thanks also to Dee for getting us a mention twice on 6Music.

Thanks to everyone for commenting on each other’s blogs and being so supportive. That’s what Janathon’s about.

Thanks to my new Twitter friends for the chat and banter. If you didn’t join the party on Twitter, you missed out, it was buzzing.

Thanks to Shaun for putting up with me stressing about it all with the worry that it would all turn out to be a disaster and I end up giving the prizes to the wrong people (that could still happen, eek).

I think that’s it for now. I’ll be checking all the stats in a couple of days and will announce the winners by the end of the week.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 12.54 miles
Time: 1:29:13
Speed: 8.4mph
Calories: 384

Total mileage for Janathon
Running: 22 miles
Cycling: 88 miles
Swimming: 4 lengths
Cross-training: 4 hours
Calories: 6424
Days completed: 24/31

So, a pretty lousy effort really. You’ve all put me to shame!

I said to Shaun that if he ran in daylight then I’d go with him on the bike and so he did run in daylight and I went with him and I saw a fox but Shaun didn’t, even though the fox crossed his path and we went past the owl sanctuary and in the distance we could see the windmill and that was about it really and sorry this blog post is a bit shit but I want to go and watch  Come Dine With Me and you could read the one below instead if you haven’t already as it’s a bit better.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 6.14 miles
Time: 48:40
Speed: 7.6mph
Calories: 209
Foxes: 1
Owl sanctuaries: 1
Windmills: 1
Come Dine With Mes: 1

Well, I’ve only done 20 days, anyway. Although, in my defence, that is the highest amount of Janathon days I’ve completed ever. So yay.

I had to finish another assignment this morning, so no gym as I didn’t want to do my assignment in my dressing gown and knew once I was dressed, I wouldn’t bother getting changed once more into my gym kit. It has just occurred to me that I could have done my assignment in my gym kit and gone to the gym straight after. Duh.

Still, I didn’t slack and that’s the main thing. Today I got on my bike and chose the purple bike as it has more gears and I was starting off by going up a hill. When I got half way up the hill, the person on a bike in front of me had got off and pushed. Lightweight.

I was going to try a new route but it didn’t go very far away really and it only ended up being a bit under five miles, so that makes me a bit of a lightweight too.

Er, that was about it really. Sorry for the boring post. I’ll try and find something to rant about tomorrow.

Stats
Distance: 4.75 miles
Time: 29:43
Speed: 9.6mph
Calories: 146
Janathons completed so far out of 31: 20
People pushing bikes up hills: 1
Mes pushing bikes up hills: 0
Boring blog posts: 1

During Janathon, I found out there was a local participant and so I tracked him down on Facebook and sent him a message and said hello local person and he said hello back and asked if I was a member of a running club and I said no, I had thought of joining Ashford & District Road Running Club as it looks nice and friendly but I live in [insert name of small area on the outskirts of Ashford] and I don’t drive and if my boyfriend didn’t want to come along I’d have to cycle two miles into town and then another two miles out the other side along the motorway and he said oh, I’m the membership secretary of that club and I live in [insert name of neighbouring small area on the outskirts of Ashford] and I can give you a lift and so I said hurrah, thank you, I’ll ask my boyfriend if he wants to come along and if he does, he can drive us but if not, I’ll take you up on your kind offer of a lift.

Shaun did indeed want to come along to the running club and we were going to go last week but I felt bleurgh and didn’t want to go but this week we did go and I got introduced to the other women running that week and I was asked how far and fast I run and I said not much at the moment, I’m really slow, about 12 minute miles and only doing about 3 miles and she said we’re probably doing a bit more than 3 miles today and so I thought ok, she probably means 3.5 or 4 miles and I can cope with that but when she told someone else the route she’d planned to go I thought THAT SOUNDS LIKE A FLIPPING LONG WAY TO ME and I escaped to the toilet and then I went outside to see if Shaun was there to tell him I wasn’t going to run and he was there but so were the women who were about to head off for their run and I said to Shaun, I’m not running, they’re going too far, I’m going to stay here and wait for you but then the women said OH NO YOU’RE NOT, YOU’RE COMING WITH US and I said no, really, you’re going too far, you’re going about six miles and I’m not fit enough, I only want to do three miles, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer and one of them ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY PUSHED ME ALONG TOWARDS THE ROAD and I said do you mind? I don’t really like being pushed and I shrugged her off and turned round and went back to the changing room in a strop but they all followed me and the one who pushed me said she was sorry she upset me and I said that’s ok and they said I wasn’t allowed to wimp out (not their exact words) and I had to run and I’d be fine and if I didn’t want to go the whole way, they’d come back with me and I said I didn’t want to cut their run short and I only wanted to do three miles and they said that was fine and when we’d done three miles, we’d turn round and come back and I said BUT THAT WILL MAKE IT SIX MILES and I said I didn’t want to hold them up and they said you won’t hold us up and I said but I already am, you’d be a mile down the road by now but they wouldn’t take no for an answer and so I went out and thought I’ll turn round after 1.5 miles and come back even though I won’t know where I am and after 1 mile one of them says we’re going too fast and I look at my Garmin and it says we’ve done a mile in 12 minutes and I think that’s fast? and I can’t turn around and run back as there’s someone behind me and there’s no escape and I have to keep going but there’s a lot of walking involved and we get back completely soaking wet as it’s been pissing down and Shaun’s been waiting 45 minutes for me because we’ve gone 7 SODDING MILES and it’s taken 90 SODDING MINUTES.

Bah.

But secretly I’m pleased I’ve done 7 miles even though it took a flipping long time and then Shaun and I go to the pub and I have sausage and mash and he has steak and chips.

Yum.

Stats
Distance: 7.06 miles
Time: 1:36:33
Pace: 13:41
Calories: 614
Running clubs: 1
Pushy women in running clubs: about 6
Rain: lots
Sausages and mash: 1
Steak and chips: 1

I have made the executive decision to not Janathon today. I’m a month behind with my coursework and I had an assignment due two weeks ago that I haven’t submitted yet and another one due next week and so today will be spent reading and writing (and I don’t mean reading Tweets and writing Facebook updates).

And I’m still feeling a bit bleurgh, anyway.

There endeth the excuses.

(If I do go for a bike ride later, I will delete this blog post and pretend I didn’t say anything about slacking.)

I couldn’t be bothered to go to the gym today, so I thought I’d do some weights in the conservatory but then I remembered the rowing machine that’s in there and so while I cooked my leek and potato soup for lunch, I did twenty minutes rowing.

Stats (rowing machine)
Time: 20 minutes

I was going to go the gym this morning but Shaun said it was nice and sunny and bright and too nice a day to go to the gym so I said I’d go for a bike ride instead and did he want to come too? but he said no, he wanted to carry on building his shed and so I said that’s not very romantic, you should be taking me out somewhere and he said I’ll take you to Tesco later and so I went out on my bike and it was indeed a nice bright sunny day but it was windy and the wind had brought in tons and tons of litter all over the place, except I don’t think wind can be blamed for the carpet and the mattress I saw dumped; the blame for that would lie with some chavvy local Ashfordian.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 14.26 miles
Time: 1:30:54
Speed: 9.4 mph
Nice bright sunny days: 1 
Romantic days out to Tesco: 1
Litter: tons
Pikey chavvy local Ashfordians: lots