Tag: Janathon

Just an ordinary shop girl

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I’ve always wanted to work in a shop. I can remember saying to my mum when I was 16 and she wanted me to go to secretarial college and I said I’d rather work in a shop than be stuck in an office. Then she bribed me with £100 (I’m not that cheap these days) and so I went to secretarial college and got stuck in an office for twenty-two years.

Anyway, now I’ve got a shop. Ok, it’s only a virtual one, but I’m quite excited. It’s a Janathon shop and you can buy lots of Janathon things like t-shirts, hoodies, bags, mugs, and – my favourite – a dog t-shirt.

janathon_dog_tshirt

So, off you go then, visit my Cafe Press Janathon shop and fill your boots!

The JogBlog guide to overheating in winter

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I’ve obviously become a complete wuss since moving to Kent. In London, it’d have to be at least minus-something before I even slightly pondered wearing long sleeves. This morning, although it was 9 degrees, I put on long sleeves, my Hippsy, my touchscreen gloves and because the top I was wearing had a rather wide neck, my Buff.

buff

I’d worn my Buff a few days ago on my bike. It’s great on a bike if you don’t like strangling yourself by doing your jacket right up, they keep the draught out perfectly. And if you don’t mind looking a bit of a div, you can pull it up over your nose to keep the chill off your mouth. You can even wear it on your head. In fact, there are so many ways to wear a Buff, when you buy one, they’ll send you a booklet and a DVD demonstrating all the different ways.

Today’s run was a 2.5 miler to see how unfit I was. It was also to make me feel slightly less bad about the scales showing me in the dreaded double figures for the first time ever. I had been expecting it – I haven’t exercised properly for weeks and I’ve been eating and drinking loads, the weight didn’t come on by accident. Still, marathon training and Janathon should sort that out. Won’t it?

Stats:
Distance: 2.5 miles-ish
Time: 30 minutes-ish
Pace: Slow
Walking breaks: 0 (yay)
Long sleeve tops: 1
Hippsys: 1
Pairs of touchscreen gloves: 1
Buffs: 1
Too many pieces of clothing: 3
Digits on the scales: Double
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Courtney Love
Knifeworld
Mark Ronson
Gay Dad
Stornoway

Marathon training is looming

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My calendar tells me that marathon training starts on Monday. It also tells me that it’s a rest day, so at least I’m being eased in gently. I am going to try and stick to the schedule although:

a) it thinks I’m going to run 8 miles next Saturday when I haven’t run further than 1.5 miles since the Great South Run at the end of October;

b) it’s unlikely that I’ll run the London Marathon, as I don’t fancy a big run that’s full of walkers, charity runners, people in fancy dress, cheering crowds and bands along the route; and

c) it’s unlikely that I’ll complete the training anyway, as – I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before – there isn’t anywhere decent round here to run.

I will be doing Janathon though in my usual haphazard way. If you’re also doing Janathon, can you help spread the word? Tweet it, Facebook it, blog it, whatever it – lets get a record number of participants this year, eh? Ta!

[Just remembered that next Saturday is my birthday and I need to go out at lunchtime, so eight miles is unlikely. Not a good start!]

Janathon 2013 – go on, you know you want to!

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Yee ha, entries for Janathon 2013 are now open!

For those of you who haven’t a clue what a Janathon is, it’s a yearly challenge held in – unsurprisingly – January. Taking part is simple – all you have to do is run and blog every day. If you don’t want to run every day, you can do some other form of exercise, it’s up to you (although if you want to be among the truly hardcore, you’ll need to run every day).

It’s a great way to get fit, make new friends, get new readers to your blog and gain more Twitter followers (if you’re fussed about that kind of thing), so go and sign up now at the Janathon website.

Oh, and there’s a post-Janathon party at the end in London, too, where we eat pasta and pizza and drink lots of beer. Why else do you think I continue with this madness?

Competition: Win a copy of Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

christopher_mcdougall_born_to_runAfter saying to Tom that I’d look forward to his Juneathon sestina (after being promised one for Janathon, dum de dum…), Tom asked if I would make do with a limerick instead.

I said no.

But, it did inspire me to have a bit of fun before the hard work of Juneathon commences and hold a competition, so I’m giving away a copy of Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.

I’m not much of a book reviewer (and it’s been a while since I read it) but it’s a book about a bloke who goes running with those Tarahumara dudes in Mexico. It’s a highly entertaining read and a brilliantly written book, as you can see from the glowing reviews on amazon.

To win a copy, all you have to do is write a limerick and post it below. The one I like the best, wins.

To start you off, here’s the first line:

There once was a runner in Kent

Off you go then!

Terms and conditions
Competition closes midnight Tuesday 31 May 2011
UK entrants only (unless you want to pay the postage)

Heaven 17

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Grim was postponed! Yay! I didn’t have to do it last Saturday! Yay!The bad news, though, is that it was only postponed and not cancelled, so I still have to do it. On 15 January 2011. But that’s quite cool, as it will mean a hardcore Janathon effort and the most hardcore Janathoners win, so hurrah for me. Oh, I can’t win my own competition? Bollocks.

Still, with just over five weeks until the new Grim date, I thought I’d better get out there and do some training, now that the snow has just about gone. One of the reasons I was going to pull out of Grim was because I am the world’s most nervous car passenger (I am, really. I scream whenever a car comes towards us on the other side of the road) and couldn’t bear the thought of being in a car for 100 miles or whatever it is in the dark and the cold and the snow and the ice but now that excuse has evaporated along with the white stuff and the excuse of not being fit enough has gone (assuming I do some training), it looks like I’ve run out of excuses.under_armour

So this morning I put on my new Coldgear Under Armour compression top, which apparently is ideal for temperatures under 12 degrees and as my weather widget said it was 1 degree this morning, it seemed an ideal time to try it out. I was a bit dubious as it’s very thick, tight fitting and has a high neck, and I’m more of a thin, loose fitting, nothing round my neck type person but I squeezed into it and put a looser light green short-sleeved top over it, so as not to look too much like a middle-aged, lumpy Catwoman.

I set off for my run and forgot about the high neck immediately and the top was warm and comfortable, and not restrictive at all. It may also have magical powers as I actually managed to run up most of the hill, too, although that may be down to spending a lot of time in the gym last week and nothing to do with magical powers at all.What was even more amazing was that for most of my run, I was going at a smooth, steady pace and that could either be because of the magical powers of my new top or because I’d been on the treadmill a few times recently, which keeps you ticking over as steady as a metronome.

I even managed to run quicker than my recent usual *speed* of 12 minute miles and ran at an average of 11:17 minute miles, which when I got home, realised sounded like Heaven 17 and then tried to think of more paces that sounded like 80s pop bands but couldn’t think of any.

Stats:
Distance: 3.08 miles
Time: 34:46
Pace: 11:17m/m
Calories: 324
Postponed Grims: 1
New compression tops: 1
Paces sounding like 80s pop bands: 1
Music:Audiofuel
Hole

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