2013

Hello.

It's the 1st of January 2013.

So last year I read a few less books then I wanted only around 70. Reviewed hardly any!! ;( which was a bit of a failure, and barely wrote a creative word.

But, I did loose 5.5 stone and run a marathon. Oh and yes I got a boob job in November!! Hurrah I has boobs!!

This year; loose a bit more weight maybe down to between 9st 7lbs and 9st 11lbs. Run at least one more marathon. Read at least 52 books (would like 76), write some reviews, Study IT more and get at least one certificate showing I've learnt something in the year. Start to do some creative writing. Yes, it's a lot. The creative writing is the thing that will be sacrificed first I know ;(

Well I have started with the running 8.34 km in exactly 1 hour. So that pace would be a few seconds under 5h for a marathon if I could keep it going. The first half was through a mud bath, which at times was deeper then my trainers, so I was quite content to get that far in 1 hour.

I hope to start my first book in bed tonight. We shall see might just sleep as back to work tomorrow.

Anyway I'm busy watching the proper Star Wars trilogy on Blu-ray, ohhh they put it right... Han shot first!!

So try to see you tomorrow. Lets see i how long I can keep up with daily posts no matter how short some of them are.

My First Marathon

Wow.

I am sorry I did say I was going to write a decent amount of blog posts about my marathon training but in the end I did it all via www.runnersworld.co.uk  I created a post on their beginners forums and put all my posts and updates in there.

Here is the thread

So if you want please read through that thread and you will basically get my training experience.

So how did I do. Well I finished in 5h 30m 22s.  Now some will say this is slowww, but you know what I'm darn well proud that I managed to get around.

So how did I start, well I started my diet on 21st March at 15st 8lbs.  Then at the end of April I was in the office in Milton Keynes, and just said sod it i'm signing up for the Leicester Marathon on 14th of October.  I then celebrated my birthday and got that week or so out of the way.  Then came home, and said that's it.  I hunted around and found the running plan that was most appropriate for me at asics.co.uk So I signed up and i've ran with that plan.  I had days when i was knackered from work, but apart from two weeks when I was injured I did every single run on the plan, and as time went on added a few extra runs in.  I was very nervous, but I just put all of my faith in the plan and it worked!! I did it.  I was looking at my plan now and amazingly I have now had 99 runs and have ran a total of 666km every single run I do, I add to my.asics.co.uk one of the reasons that I decided on the asics website was because I used asics 2170 trainers :)  Pot luck really but hey I got the right pair at the beginning and loved them :)  Only 1 blister in all my training and that was the one time i was silly and changed my socks as an experiment.. well i won't make that mistake again.

So what was the marathon itself like.

It was amazing.  I set off to quick. I thought that I was going slow but I wasn't I was going quicker than normal, oops!! i slowed down after the first 5km or so, but managed to get to the halfway point in 2h 30m so i was on for a 5h marathon.  But that was to quick compared to my training plans, so I really found it a bit of a struggle in the second half.  I had a 6km stretch from around 32km that was really difficult but i kept plodding along and got a bit of a second wind for the last few km, which was awesome running through the centre of Leicester with the Sunday afternoon shoppers watching on.  It's really hard as the final 1 km is pretty much all uphill, great fun :)

It's funny but the worse thing in the last few km was going downhill. I was starting to get slightly wobbly legs, and found downhill was a heck of a strain on my calves.  But, hey I kept going and got there.  The three photo's above were great.  2 minutes after the line, the others show me literally going phewwwww after crossing the line, and the look on my face when I was being given my medal. It was such an awesome feeling.

Sorry this doesn't make much sense it's like an excited utterance of YESSSS I DID IT :)

Training update.

Hi.

Just a quick update. Another week and fantastically another 3 lbs off so I've lost 30 lbs in 10 weeks.

Training is going well on Sunday I did my first ever 5k and I managed it without stopping once. I think that it helped that it was raining a lot as it kept me cooler.

Today I followed the 5k up with a 2.5k jog and 2.5k walk, followed by another 6k walking the dog in the evening.

For some reason the dieting is harder this week. I only seem to be loosing 1 lb at most but saying that two days to go ;) and after 2 weeks with 3 lb losses both weeks it's not surprising that I've slowed down, I might not actually be eating enough considering I am burning a few calories off. It's a weird balancing act of eating the right amount.

Anyway weigh in is on Wednesday so I will find out then.

Have fun everyone.

Steph