Blue Runnings

We survived the Great North Run! But, I’m afraid I’m far too plum-tuckered to tell you about it tonight so I’m going to bed instead!

In short though, we made it, I have an interestedly one-sided sunburn and friction burns I don’t think I’ll be sharing in polite company, and I think I’ve left my knees in South Shields somewhere.

More when I’m not about ready to pass out!

The sun even came out for the whole day and we boiled!

I had all sorts of good intentions today. I actually had a moderately productive day at work for once and was looking forward to a jog along to Wylam, which even with a later finish I would be able to do if I got changed and hurried myself out the door again. Then I got distracted by facebook as one does, but I found a freebie running book that looks amusing in the process on Amazon so that’s my evening’s entertainment sorted (I’m doing this first or it wouldn’t get written at all) so it wasn’t a completely fruitless use of my time!

That pretty much set the tone for my evening…I left the house, and literally a minute later saw 2 red kites overhead on the main road – it’s unusual to see them quite as far South as we are – they’re usually in the villages to the North or West where we see them often and I normally only see them in the distance or from the car – we’ve had a few close encounters from the car. I don’t usually get to experience them flying straight overhead when I’m not sitting in a metal box zooming along the road. So, I threw the car up the kerb as one does and dashed down the road to where I’d seen them. I don’t know why I thought I could catch them up, when they’re gliding in the opposite direction to you and particularly when they have the wind behind them they go a fair clip with very little visible effort! I think I dashed most of the length of the road before giving up and heading back to the car laughing at myself. It was a good warm-up anyway!

I got another 800 yards down the road, and there were more kites! A big flock of them right over the Derwent Walk pub car park. In for a penny in for a pound right?! I swerved into the carpark to ogle them, so of course they all flew out of sight over the high embankment, except for one who was kind enough to glide over me for a minute or two and let me ooo at him. They’re a bird I’d love to catch on camera, but typically I only had my phone – which is terrible for photos of anything that moves even at a snail pace so I had to content myself with eyeball ogling.

So, quite a chunk of my run time disappeared in my travelling time back to Prudhoe increasing by about 50% with my birdwatching detours… I’ve been thinking over the last few days about trying to get back to how I got into running, which was why I was intending to head along to the bridge at Wylam – it used to be my regular intermediary distance between the 5km and 10km distances. Before I stopped for my second kite detour, I thought I might have time for an 18 minute there-and-back again along the river, but the second stop put paid to that one as I would need to finish in time to pick P up from work, and I didn’t want to do a 12 minute one as I’m thinking of doing that tomorrow before I pick P up if I get out of work in time! I opted for another old river haunt route – along the back of the Spetchells and back along the riverside, which was actually probably the first route I started doing when I began doing a short run before picking P up when he first went on shifts.

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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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There’s a stretch of the C2C (Sea to Sea/Coast to Coast) cycle way which runs from Cumbria to Tyneside and passes through the Consett environs, and I headed out this morning for a there and back again along a stretch of it known as the Waskerley Way – a railway path similar to the Derwent Walk I sometimes follow. Looking it up now on a very helpful link from the Durham Council website, I can see I ran it the ‘wrong’ way. Some of the Bounders sometimes get dropped off at Park Head and run back to Consett – a 10 mile stretch in a predominantly downhill direction. Being on my own this morning, I dropped the car off in Consett and ran up to just before Waskerley picnic area before turning round and heading back again.

No wonder if felt easier heading back to the car! At least I seem to have gotten most of the uphills out the way while I still had some puff. I’ve only done a very short stretch of this path before, to not a huge amount further than across the viaduct on a Run England session, and then to be honest forgot it was there despite at the time thinking I would have to come back and explore further along. That particular stretch looked mostly flat and shaded, and like a good alternative to the Derwent Walk.

My intention this morning was to see if I could hit 10 miles again – it’s been 2 months since I last hit this distance. I was expecting to find myself pootling along in the shade with not much to see for the duration of the run, but the Waskerley Way crosses much more open country than the Derwent Walk and I could pretend I was fell running as I crossed the heathland, while still being on a flat, level-ish, good quality footpath! I think it’s probably the furthest I’ve been from towns and villages on a run that wasn’t part of a race – and to be honest I think Kielder is the only one that’s felt as remote. The morning started off sunny but was kind enough to cloud over once I left the shaded avenues and return to sunny not long before I was back among the trees! The views were fantastic, I really felt I was out in the moors and wilderness 🙂

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Another day of getting home from work starving for some reason, and there’s still quarter of a cake left…but it’s ok as I made an enormous portion of dinner and ate that instead 🙂 Day 2 done for no junk food. P’s away for a man-date weekend with a friend from uni and I always find it harder to motivate myself to cook anything when it’s just me. It’s easy to grab whatever’s handy and shove that in my face.

Tonight was a no running night as I’m hoping to have a run filled weekend and prefer not to do four consecutive days running, so tonight was a gym session I’m still working on three circuits with the 2.5kg weights, but I added a section of ‘own weight’ leg exercises to the end of each circuit which I could really feel – I normally only do this the once at the end of a full workout rather than three times in total. Hopefully I’ve not overdone it and my legs will be energised rather than wiped out and jellyesque tomorrow!

J bought me a high intensity workout book a few weeks ago, which doesn’t use equipment so suits my gym set up just fine as I only use a few small bits of kit, no big weights or machines. I haven’t had more than a flick through of it so far, but I might start perusing it to try and split my gym sessions – one weights session and one higher intensity jump around a week or something. Or as a back-up for when I inevitably get bored of my current one!

I have an important decision to make by tomorrow morning: I got some iron-on letter transfers from Mind when I was running Liverpool for them, but I kept them for putting on my Bounders vest rather than the Mind one as I wear that one more often. I always feel slightly like an imposter wearing a charity shirt when I’m not actively fundraising for them, I guess it does still increase awareness and is essentially free advertising for them, but I still feel people assume I’m raising money and currently I’m not. It was the same with my Great Run series t-shirt last year – I hardly wore it because I know how big the Great North Run is around here and that many people wearing it would be training for it and possibly assume I was. I did a few of the Great Run series last year – the Great Women’s in Glasgow and the Great North 5k and 10k, so I was definitely entitled to wear it but I still felt like a cheat…

Anyway, back to those letters! I need to decide whether I want them on the bottom of the front, bottom of the back or top of the back. They don’t fit on the top of the front without overlapping the gold (which looks silly) or overlapping the collar.

Comments welcomed but I suspect as it’s now 10pm and I’ll be ironing them on EARLY tomorrow morning (race starts at 10am and I still need to get my race number etc. before then), I’ll probably just be picking one myself!

Fingers crossed for a cool morning tomorrow 🙂

Campervan cash: £4

Well, I found a moneybox 🙂 not the one I was looking for but one none the less. I have managed to complete day 1 of my no junk food challenge. There’s still cake in the house but I have resisted so far, despite getting home super munchy.

I was toying with doing a gym session tonight and a run tomorrow night, but with the Gateshead Trail on Saturday morning I decided to swap them round and do a short run tonight around the village triangular, a route I haven’t done since April despite it being pretty much impossible for me to get much more local. I’ve set myself a new best time for this route, but didn’t really enjoy it. It was the coolest it’s been with it being later than when I normally run, but I think I need to slow my pace back down to get the distance back up for the summer. That hill at the start never seems to get any easier!

I also had some run related post today – Great Run related in fact. My GNR number has arrived! Marking the imminent arrival of an event I have some work to do before I’m ready for. Time to dig the game face out the cupboard.

Campervan Cash: £2

I wasn’t kidding about pigging out in Bruges – waffles and icecream and pizzas and more – that’s what holidays are for right?! But now I’m home, my trousers are starting to feel a bit tight and I want to shift an inch or two before the GNR, so I need to stop eating like I’m still on holiday! The monster Costco cake pictured above snuck into the trolley somehow this evening, and after having the tiniest slice I could cut – nothing like what’s missing I hasten to add – and a BBQ dinner I found myself sitting at the computer with my jeans unbuttoned so quite clearly some drastic action is needed! Just to add insult to injury the cat started kneading my stomach when I sat down <_< Her sense of timing is impeccible. There’s no way 2 people should ever be able to eat all that cake – it weighs 1.8kg!!!! So, half of it will be coming into work with me tomorrow, and I suspect the rest will be gone before I get home from work tomorrow afternoon…there may be a few crumbs left on the plate and a small smear of jammy icing.

No more chocolates, cakes and biscuits for me – and no substituting with crisps either! In an attempt to stick with this at least until the GNR (32 days away!), I’m going to find a money box (I have one somewhere but I haven’t seen it since we moved house last October, so that could be an adventure in itself), and fill it according to the following rules:

• Junk food free day: +£1
• Exercise session: +£1
• 7 consecutive junk food free days: +£3 (a total of £10 for that week)

The longer I can keep it going, the more I get to treat myself at the end of it – preferably with something that’s not junk food! Sounds like it’s going to cost me a fortune – but it’s probably still less than I’d spend on puddings and sweet snacks so I’ll be quids in and slimmer in the long run! Fingers crossed I need to do a bank run for pound coins soon…having a money box of notes that doesn’t weigh something significant and rattle just isn’t the same!

I’ll be putting a running total of my junk food savings at the bottom of each post from now until I decide I can be trusted near vending machines and in the bakery section of Morrissons where these little bad boys live…could be a while!

And now, it’s on the internet and in the public domain where my mother can see it and keep tabs on me…

Fingers crossed the next blog has some money on it!