2013 Rundown - Review of my Goals

Here is a quote from my post last January in which I listed my goals for 2013:
'...this year I am setting tougher and more specific goals, and if I don't meet them all, then at least that means they were challenging!'


Those goals turned out to be a bit too tough and challenging and I certainly didn't meet them all...


1. Complete my second Marathon
Of course I managed this one! Having suffered through Edinburgh Marathon in 2010, I almost enjoyed Brighton Marathon in April. It was all down to good training and careful planning. If you have time on your hands, the recap is here.


2. PB at the Marathon
Yes! Originally I hoped for around 4h20m, but as my training went on, that seemed too optimistic and I refined it to 4h30m. On the day I ran with a 4h28m pace band, and got an official time of 4h28m exactly. I'm still basking in the glow of that accuracy. 

My running highlight of 2013

3. Run 10+ races
Nowhere near! 2013 turned out to be a very quiet year for races for me, and I think I did only 4. There was 1 DNS, due to ankle injury, and that injury also stopped me entering any races at the end of the year.
But on the other hand, I hadn't planned to do parkrun so often. I did 30 parkruns in 2013 - that's 30 5Ks that were not officially races, but were timed runs with other people (so quite race-like). 18 of those were run with Robbie, who surprised me first by being able to run the whole thing, and second by being so keen to keep coming back for more! This was something I hadn't planned but loved doing in 2013.

Robbie's first run - first of many!

4. Run 1000 miles
I'm still a bit gutted about this one. I was just about on course to do this in September, as long as I ran 20 miles per week until the end of the year, which I think I could have managed. But then I hurt my ankle, had about 5 weeks off and that was the end of that goal. The final total was 880 miles, which although a long way off my goal, I'm still quite pleased with as it's my highest year yet. Small whoop!


5. Cycle 500 miles
No chance! This failure was mainly down to not having time. The last term of College (Sept - Dec) ended up being really busy for me, and when we added moving house to the mix, I've had very little free time over the last few months. When I was focussed on my running mileage, I didn't have time to cycle as well, and I only cycled a measly 283 miles - significantly less than 2012.


6. Do regular consistent Strength Training
I did this really well while marathon training. Since then though, it basically dropped off my radar as usual.


7. Do stretches EVERYDAY!!!
Again, I did this perfectly up to the marathon. But I did keep doing them afterwards. In the last few weeks I have slackened off a lot, and I dropped from 'every day' to 'after a run', but still, not bad.


8. Keep swimming! Learn to do front crawl and build up to swimming 20+ lengths regularly
No no no. Just no time, and I kept my focus on running. I haven't been swimming for a while now... Must do better!

9. Get a top 3 Age Group Placing
I haven't really done enough races to give myself a chance of this one. Also, I need to do small, local races with hardly any women (and no other 40-44 year olds).

10. Keep Plantar Fasciitis at bay
Yeeees! I'm sure the stretches and strength training helped with this. There's been the occasional niggle, but no heel injury. I did get that ankle injury though, which may also have been an overuse injury, and possibly dure to the marathon.

So there we have it. I missed a lot of those targets, but I suppose if I'd done them all, they would have been too easy. Some of those will definitely continue to be goals for 2014. 

Excellent Christmas present from the family!

 

Back online - Catch up!

Hello? Anyone still there?

I am finally properly back online since we moved house. All this time I have survived on occasional wifi use at other people's houses, but at last we're fully functioning - hurrah!

So I never got to post about my birthday.

We actually moved house on my birthday, so it was a fairly boring day of cleaning, waiting for removal men and unpacking. But before all that, we had a great morning at parkrun! It was Eastbourne's 100th run, so runners were encouraged to dress up in Christmassy gear.

Robbie and I took our Santa hats (although Robbie's might have been a bit big)

Anyway, before the run, Robbie finally got his t-shirt. This is a prize that is awarded to junior runners when they achieve the milestone of 10 runs. Robbie did his 10th run in mid-September, but it has taken this long for the t-shirt to arrive in Eastbourne!

This was actually Robbie's 18th parkrun, and my 40th - when I get to 50, I'll get a t-shirt too!

We took it very easy, and finished 141st and 142nd - it was a much larger field than usual! Afterwards there was cake and mince pies to celebrate the 100th run. It was a great birthday morning, although Robbie did try to steal my mince pie - no chance!

November Rundown and a Magic Bunny

Weeellllll, November's running wasn't AMAZING, but at least it was an improvement on a sorry injured October. My ankle injury meant I'd only managed 2 runs of about 6 miles that month, and in November I kept building up the runs, slowly but surely.

Ran - 15x = 58 miles
Cycled - 2x = 15.6 miles   
Parkruns - 3

So I've been sticking to short distances but increasing the amount of runs. My ankle still bothers me occasionally, so I'm not overdoing in, and besides, with work, kids and moving house, I haven't got the time for any real long runs at the moment.

Last Saturday we had a pretty good parkrun-day. Emma had been chosen as her class 'Star of the week' - for 'perfect behaviour and great maths'! This meant that she got to bring a toy bunny home for the week, and was expected to keep a diary of fun activities we'd done with 'Magic Bunny' over the week.

Here she is reading him a bedtime story for example...

Naturally on Saturday, we had to take Magic Bunny along to a parkrun. We posed with him before the run, and then Pete had the bright idea that Robbie and I should take Magic Bunny with us on the run.

So I ran round with Magic Bunny in my hand. He actually turned out to be rather helpful as whenever Robbie was flagging, I told him that the Bunny was going to overtake, and put him by Robbie's shoulder. That made Robbie sprint off for a bit!

He had lots of little surges of speed, then he would say he was tired. Another of Magic Bunny's tricks was to put a spell on Robbie's legs to keep him going. This also worked!

As we approached the finish, Robbie took Magic Bunny, and for once, Robbie didn't manage to sprint fo the line. In fact he had really pushed himself during the run - he ran 32m22s, which was a massive 52-SECOND PB!!!

Clearly we could do with Magic Bunny's spells to help us every week...

New House

Well we have been busy. Just 6 months after getting an offer accepted on a house, we have finally got the keys and the previous owner has moved out. To say it dragged on a bit would be an understatement, and we finally completed on Friday afternoon - the final day of our mortgage agreement - just a few minutes before close of business for the day.

Eeeeeeeek!

Then it turned out that the previous owner had left the house in something of a state. It was full of old rubbish and absolutely filthy. Luckily we aren't moving in yet, and he has to cover the cost of removing the stuff he left behind.

What the living room was like when we went in!

So we have spent the week trying to get things sorted. We've had the rubbish removed, and today we are getting the whole place deep-cleaned.

Meanwhile, I haven't had time for as much running as I'd like... But my parents were here last weekend, and that meant that on Saturday, Pete, Robbie and I could all do parkrun! Mum and Dad looked after Emma while she played in the park; Pete ran with Robbie and I ran at my own speed for the first time since June!

As I'm pretty unfit at the moment, after missing runs with my ankle injury, I was curious to see how fast I could run 5K. I hoped to run under 27 minutes, but I actually finished in 26m01s. I was pleased with that.

It was a lovely sunny morning and a nice run. Pete and Robbie finished a few places behind me, and Mum took some nice pictures.

With his finish token

Dad and Emma spectating

Hail, thunder, sunshine

In my last post I mentioned that we have had loads of rain recently. Nothing has changed since then, although there has been the odd dry spell in between the wet.

Last week Pete was on holiday, which meant that although I was working, he did all the cooking and picking up kids from school, which made things much easier for me. I also had 2 days off (as usual), and on Tuesday, we took the opportunity to go to the cinema - yes - in the daytime! First time we've done something so decadent for at least 8 years... We saw Captain Phillips, which was pretty amazing.

On Friday, my other day off, I simply insisted that we do something more worthy, so we decided to have a bike ride together. I can't remember this ever happening before. We biked to the coast, did the crossword over a leisurely coffee, then biked home (in the rain). It was a really nice way to spend the morning.

Not at work = beard

On Saturday it was of course parkrun-day, but Pete wanted to run, so he did it with Robbie while Emma and I spectated. They set off on a course covered with puddles and us girls had a wander round the park.

After seeing them at the half-way point, we were on our way back to the finish when there was a huge clap of thunder. It was so out of the blue it came as a surprise, and Emma was a bit scared...

It started to rain, so we walked a bit quicker, and then suddenly the skies opened and there was a HUGE hailstorm. I've never been out in anything like that - the hailstones were fairly big and it just went on for ages. We got totally soaked to the skin - I mean I literally couldn't have been wetter if I'd jumped in the lake - and we ran to a bus shelter to wait for Pete and Robbie.

Not happy

They eventually emerged looking like drowned rats. Apparently the barcode scanner didn't work because everything was so wet, so all the results were worked out manually - thanks volunteers! It was an incredible downpour.

Hailstones and water everywhere

On Sunday though, such a change! It was a lovely dry, sunny day - much more my kind of weather. We took advantage with a family bike ride. All 4 of us got on our bikes and went a coule of miles up the local trail. There were LOADS of people about - clearly everyone was sick of being indoors during the rain and had come out in the sun.

Emma managed to cycle really well, and although Robbie fell off his bike after skidding in mud at the end, we all had a good time.

It's rained all day today, and the same is forecast for tomorrow (when I'm planning a longish run). Will the mud ever dry out? Bring on the cold and frost!

Off-line

It's been a while since my last post for a number of reasons...

Firstly, I was lacking in enthusiasm brought about by my ankle injury and not being able to run. I was feeling a bit blah...

Secondly, last week was half term here, and with the kids off school for a week, we went on holiday for a few days, staying away from home.

Thirdly, when we got back, out internet connection wasn't working, so I was without access to the internet for a few days - nightmare!

So here are some things I've been getting up to since my last post;

1. My ankle is not entirely better, but I'm back running. Just short distances so far, with my longest run being 5 miles this morning. Yay!

2.  I've run 3 more parkruns with Robbie - he's now done 14!

3. October finished with me having run a spectacular 6.35 miles (2 parkruns). At least I also cycled 34 miles.

4. We had a lovely break in Buxton. It's a beautiful town in the Derbyshire countryside, and an extremely picturesque area.

Caves!

Pavillion Gardens, Buxton

5. I spent 2 days being put up in a posh hotel in London for some teacher training. The food was great, the room was lovely and I met some really nice people.

6. I had a last-minute meet up with my sister (who works in London). We has a lovely dinner and a rare chance to chat without being interrupted by children!

7.  I went to the gym in the hotel and had fun playing on the treadmill, bike and cross-trainer. This was a gentle test for my ankle.

8. On Friday morning I went for a run around London! It was a scenic run, involving 2 bridges across the Thames, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and the Millenium wheel. I loved it!

9. I missed Halloween. However, trick or treating went ahead without me:

10. For the last few weeks it has hardly stopped bloody raining! It's very mild, but I could do with some dry, sunny days as I ease back into running again.

The best thing about rain

So hopefully I'll be back into running in the next few days and weeks, and regain my enthusiasm for blogging and all things running related!

No running but still busy

It's been almost 3 weeks since I hurt my ankle and 3 weeks since I last ran. For 2 weeks I didn't do any exercise at all.

Although this meant I missed 2 weeks of parkrun, I did take the kids along to marshal one Saturday, and the following week, Pete ran round with Robbie!

Ready to direct runners

It was Pete's first ever parkrun, but of course Robbie's 11th, so he was able to show his Dad the way! Emma and I spectated and cheered people on, and did a little bit of pointing the way as a few new runners almost got lost by the play park where we were hanging out.

Happy runners

They finished in just over 33 minutes, with Robbie doing his usual sprint to the line to finish ahead of a parent!

Sprint to the finish

This was the 3rd race (after the 10K I should have run in) that I had spectated at while not being able to run - I've pretty much had enough of that now!

Last Saturday, after parkrun I was working in the afternoon, so I decided to cycle to work. I hadn't been on my bike as I thought it might affect the ankle, but I was fed up with doing nothing, and it was a lot better than before.

So I biked 10 miles, and it was a bit sore afterwards.

On Sunday we all went swimming, and while the kids were practising their dives with Pete (bellyflop for Emma and legs-akimbo for Robbie), I swam a few lengths. I don;t think swimming caused any harm to my ankle at least.

Last Tuesday I had enough time to squeeze in a workout, so I did another bike ride. It was a beautiful autumn day and I had a sunny ride along the cycle path.

It was one of those bike rides when I stopped off for a coffee, a read of my kindle and a pastry. In fact I must be putting on weight as I haven't cut down on my eating at all while I've been languishing on the injury list.

I haven't tried running yet, but my ankle feels almost back to normal - there's just a niggling pain when I've been on my feet all day. So I'm planning to run parkrun this Saturday. I'll jog round with Robbie so I won't be pushing it. Hopefully I'll be back to normal soon!