Janathon Winners Announced!


Janathon winner

Well done to everyone who won a prize and thank you for taking part in Janathon (and a special thank you to those of you who have done what must seem like flipping billions of them but keep coming back for more).

Those of you who won – you’re under absolutely no obligation to do this but if you did want to share the above image and blog/tweet your thanks to the companies who donated the prizes, that would be nice. Just saying, like.

Anyway, as you were. Here are the winners.

Audiofuel running tracks

Tim Hodson

Beer from Country Life Brewery

Lena Conlin

2 bottles of Beet-It shots

Anke

Handmade bracelet by Corinna Korrubel

Tim Hodson

Online detox class from Mission Lean & Clean 

Carla Greer

21 day detox recipe book from Mission Lean & Clean

Lucy Jiwa

Case of drinks from Everything But The Cow

Stuart Walker

Box of Ener:Gels

Julian James
Angela White
Ruth Rouse
Helena Romanowska
Stuart Walker
Keith Jenkins

A pair of Firefly knee straps

Catherine Henderson

A box of Fuelify nutritious snacks

Freya Rodger

Helly Hansen top and tights

Dave Thomas

Fat Burn Revolution book by Julia Buckley

Ruth Rouse

A pair of shoes from New Balance

Laura Dryden

Thanks again for taking part and thanks to all the generous brands and companies and people for their donations.

 

 

 

 

The Athletic Aubergine

Winter is approaching, there’s snow upon the ground… Well, there isn’t, but I thought I’d buy myself some winter running kit and burst into a bit of Human League at the same time.

Zalando is a site I’d used before and knew that they sold reasonable kit at reasonable prices. A purple pair of running tights caught my eye and I thought to myself, am I brave enough to run in purple running tights? and thought yes – I am! and put them in the basket.

Continuing on the bright and bold theme, I then ordered a purple long-sleeved Nike running top and a dark pink short-sleeved Nike t-shirt and some pink Puma socks.

Because I’d used Zalando before, the website already had my address details and so checking out by PayPal was easy. Delivery was free with an expected delivery date of 3-5 days. I’d ordered on the Monday and my gear was delivered on the following Monday. According to the tracking thing, they’d tried to deliver it on Saturday but no-one was in – they didn’t leave a card though, so no idea if they did try to deliver or not.

Today I wanted to go for a run in my new running gear. Could I be brave enough to go out in such bright clothes and look like a running aubergine or would I wimp out and put some black clothes on?

I was brave.

purple_running_gear

(Excuse the unmade bed – the cat was on the bed and I didn’t want to disturb her.)

The tights were comfortable but needed to be higher on the waist. I like my running tights to hold my belly in and these were too low and I was worried that I’d be flashing my bum. The t-shirt was great, it’s long enough and stayed in place throughout the run.

I also wore my new Saucony Progrid Ride 5 shoes that I was given on Friday at a Sportshoes.com running event (that was fab and that I’ll blog about later. In the meantime, you can read Lesley’s account on her blog).

saucony-progrid-ride-5

I wore the Saucony shoes on Saturday’s run and the first mile was great, faster than I’ve run for months. Shame I walked the other three miles though. Today’s run was comfortable and I think I may even prefer these shoes to my beloved Asics.

Flora London Marathon 2009

I didn’t run the Flora London Marathon this year (or any other year for that matter), I entered the ballot for the first time ever but I was a reject.  Although that was possibly for the best, as my training for the Kent Coastal Marathon last year only consisted of a week’s training, which was promptly ditched when I found out that a) the first half of the course was hilly; and b) I couldn’t wear my iPod.

So congratulations to Adele and all the other nutters runners who ran yesterday and who were probably a bit surprised to find out that it was a gorgeous sunny day with nothing but blue skies and no sign of the grey cloud and heavy showers that the wonderfully inept BBC weather website had predicted only the day before.

And with that in mind, if I ever get onto the Virgin London Marathon website and manage to enter the ballot for next year (which is looking unlikely as apparently due to unprecedented demand [i.e. they forgot that it gets oversubscribed by about 120,000 people each year, duh] the website is down), with the weather forecast being so unreliable, I’m going to have more sartorial dilemma’s than Leighsa when she went to the physio.  What running gear do I wear?  Shorts and sun visor?  Tracksuit bottoms, reject’s fleece and golf umbrella?  Maybe I’ll just stick to being a pantomime horse.

A fashion guide to the countryside

As you may have noticed, I haven’t blogged for a while and you also may have noticed that the last time I blogged it was about how I didn’t run the Reading Half Marathon, only turning up for the important bit, i.e. the drinking beer and eating pizza bit.

As you may also know, I have a move to the countryside coming up and whilst thinking about things like letting my house out to women with kids (kids?  In my house?  Eek.) and telling the mortgage company and the insurance company and the TV/broadband/phone company and the Inland Revenue and the gas and electric companies and countless other companies (do I need to tell the man in the local off licence to tell his kids not to expect any Christmas presents this year due to Santa’s profits being hit?) it occurred to me that I’m going to need some posh new running gear so people in the countryside don’t think that Londoners are a bunch of scruffs.

So what do I buy to impress the countryside people?  Do they even care?  If I buy green will I look like a tree and run the risk of having a dog wee on me?  And what size do I get?  I’m going to have lots of running time on my hands (or should that be feet?), so will I run so much I’m going to shrink to a size zero?  Ooh, I hope so.  Or maybe I should get a size 14 as, as well as having lots of running time, I’m also going to have lots of time to explore the new fridge and its plentiful supply of chocolate that I know lives in there.   Or maybe some hi-vis gear due to the fact that I’m going to have to run on the road (or lanes or whatever it is countryside people call that three foot wide long bit of concrete they drive down) and risk getting run over by a tractor.

Maybe I’ll just stay here where it’s safe and there’s less likelihood of being weed on by a dog or run over by a tractor.  But then where would my excuse for buying new clothes come from?