Blue Runnings

Still here? I’m not sure I am! August’s been a very busy month with travel and visitors – we spent 5 days in Bruges and had family invading for another 5 days this – not a single “exercise” session as such, but I’m absolutely knackered anyway! In need of another holiday.

At the end of last month, there were a few things I wanted to do through August – get my mileage up, lose some cake sacks, and have some fun. Success on these three counts has been varying! I have snuck the mileage up again, a few 10km’s and a 9 miler sneaking in there, but with under 2 weeks to the GNR, I’m certainly not as prepared as I was for Liverpool. I have been trying some new local running routes and some new and repeat races, and I started The Pact, which with the exception of one day where P ordered Domino’s (not cake, biscuits, crisps or pudding but there’s no way I’m going to try and convince myself that doesn’t count as junk food), I’ve stuck with it every day. I do feel trimmer for it so it’s obviously working 🙂 I’ve yet to test how that translates into fitness but at least I’m carrying slightly less for the GNR!

It was P’s birthday this weekend, and with family up too there have been cakes, biscuits, sweets, chocolates and puddings everywhere!!! If I’d started this later I would have found it much harder, but I found after the first 4-5 days I’ve actually kicked the sweet cravings and as long as I don’t actually try any, it’s been pretty easy to resist the sweet cravings, if they’ve arisen at all. After a fortnight I’ve also found I’m not constantly hungry as I was at the start – I’ve still been eating plenty but with my diet including a lot more fruit I think it’s just digested easier, or my stomach’s shrunk or something. Whatever. Not as hungry anymore anyway.

My campervan cash count so far is a whopping £32 which I’m pretty darn pleased with if I say it myself! This is 19 days of no junk food, an extra £6 for two weeks where I went seven consecutive days in a row without junk, and 7 exercise sessions. 12 days to go until the GNR and I’m wanting to keep it going until at least then. I’ve found the moneybox method to really work for me – this time at least – and I’ve not run out of £1 coins yet!

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I have spent a fair amount of this month sitting around with my feet up, especially compared with how busy June was! I started the month with my first dedicated hiking holiday to the Wicklow Mountains just South-West of Dublin with a friend of mine from uni. The idea of a hiking holiday has appealed to me for a while, but it’s not something P is really interested in, he likes to base himself in one place and explore from there rather than covering a linear or big circular route over a few days. I’m sure I can find somewhere in Northumberland or the Lakes where we can base ourselves from one place and do several circular routes to explore the area though 😉 Watch this space 😛 We bought a tent last year that’s not been used yet – definitely needs a good airing 😉

Anyway, back to July – This was a really good way to see a part of Ireland I’ve not been to before, particularly as some of the places we went and things we saw you couldn’t really get to by car – it was your own feet, a bike or nothing! You can find links to my travels here and here 🙂 I only had my GPS watch on for the actual Wicklow Way stretches, so the amount of actual walking I did while over there is severely underestimated when looking at my month summary. S’s phone fitness tracker had us clocked up at more like 50km over the 2 days than the 15.7km I’ve got us ‘officially’ marked down as.

Dublin really knocked my energy levels for six, and it was 2 weeks before I did any exercise at all, and 3 weeks before I actually got my trainers on for a run. There are a multitude of broken-record excuses for this – it was so FRIKKING HOT, I had no energy, and I am a lazy bum when given the opportunity! So I sat around on my butt and ate vast quantities of cakes instead 🙂 Everyone should have a hobby 😉 My calendar page for this month has been most appropriate (it’s The Oatmeal’s wonderfully motivating calendar for 2015)

Puddings and cakes have been the very “in” thing this summer…

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I say it every month, but the year is rapidly eluding me – half gone already! If this is how fast a year goes at 26, I’m dreading turning 30 let alone older! I’ll never keep track of things! It’s getting into summer proper now and I must confess the latter end of June I have found it a struggle to get out sometimes with the humidity. I missed the Run England session last week as I was prepping for Dublin, but it was so humid it sounds like most of the guys headed home after half their routes and just walked back struggling with getting their breathing and generally being too hot so it doesn’t sound like I missed a tremendous barrel of laughs!

It has been something of a milestone month for me, I’ve been to one of my ‘bucket list’ Northern races in the Blaydon Race (the other on the list being the Great North Run in September – watch this space, it will be here in no time!), and surviving my first ever half marathon – the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half at Liverpool! I’ve been taking something of a break from events since Liverpool, I did the Newburn River Race with J a few days after, and have been and am event free until the Colour Obstacle Rush with J and my sister on the 17th of July, which I might remember I’m doing a few days before hand when my sister appears on the doorstep!

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What a month! I think this one definitely takes the biscuit for most events in a short time frame! February, March and April had 2-3 races across each month – May had a grand total of 6! I had a pretty poor (ok, very shoddy) start to the month in terms of motivation – and I think I only really got that back mid-month. If the weather stays as it is tonight however I fear I may not make it out again! It’s blowing all the trees sideways and raining worse than it did for the Sunderland 10k! Good old British summer weather. Still, at least it’s getting dark earlier with the clouds and I may put myself to bed at a reasonable time!

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Another month disappeared! April has at least been a good month from a pushing one’s self perspective – I’ve run further and faster than I’ve done previously. My previous longest run was the Thirsk 10 in March, which took me 1:53:33 to do the 10 miles/16km. This month on a training run I covered 11miles/18km in 1:57:12 which I’m really pleased with 🙂 I haven’t done either of those distances since…13km being my longest for the last 2.5 weeks but it’s important to stick to the positives for fitness 😉

I’ve also come my closest yet to hitting a sub-60 min 10k at the Tyneside 10k, coming in at 1:02:04. Maybe this month I’ll get it…I have high hopes for the Great Manchester Run…just need to get back into training again 🙂

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