WHAT A PUDDING

Close your eyes, picture the scene, bright sunshine, warm breeze gently gliding though your hair, pina colada by your side and the waves breaking onto the white sandy beach beneath your feet.....FORGET THAT, gale blowing your Santa beard into your eyes, cold freezing rain battering into your eyes and deep puddles all across the 5 miles route of your Christmas pudding dash, add to that a fallen tree we had to hurdle as we ran through the woods around Wythenshawe Park near Manchester twice but all in all an enjoyable run if not a bit slippy and very very wet underfoot.

I managed the 4.9 miles in 49 minutes and 12 seconds, if it had been dry i reckon i could have shaved the 12 seconds off, not bad considering i had set a goal of 60 minutes to be on the safe side, came in 55th out of 133 but reckon i broke the record for eating a mince pie once i had finished. unfortunately they cancelled the mulled wine or i may have been mullered by 12 o'clock.

Here is my Prize for finishing, quite remarkable they got my picture on the medal so quickly.
Here is the run and my vital statistics pudding run details

I think I've got this running bug now, my next official race is in March in High Legh, a 10k memorial race and then another 10k in Lymm in April and then the Great Manchester 10k at the end of May, if fitness goes to plan and I lose some more weight I hope to run a half marathon in the summer if we get one, maybe a Glasgow or a Dublin trip for a holiday run.

LONG AND SLOW

on the advice from an elite marathon runner I took my weekend run nice and slowly but I did go further and i managed a 4 and a half miles relatively pain free. i set off from my flat walking quickly until i reached the frozen entrance to Carey Park, i did some very quick stretches of my calves and off i went. i had recently bought a winter running jacket, on my first run wearing it lst wednesday I was extremely warm, probably too warm for running but this time i was glad i was wearing it, overnight had been a frosty one, we dont suffer too badly with extreme weather, no floods, no major snowfalls and no lovely picturesque scenic views to look at either. 
as i passed a few walkers with their dogs i kept in my mind to not go off too quickly, i tend to think im steve cram and go as fast as i can without dying but with the knowledge of doing longer but slower being better for me in the long run(no pun intended) i took my time for once. i did a route i have often walked, heading off to the river weaver and then turning right and heading toward the flashes, no this is not an instruction to scare the birds away by flashing it is the name of the area which is attributed to the Neumann and Ashton salt workings, subsidence caused by the salt extraction cause the pool or flashes to form. click here for history 
my run was uneventful but i must admit i found it more enjoyble doing it slightly slower, maybe im getting used to running a bit now, the time i took wasnt that much slower than i have been running but it all bodes well for this Sunday...."whats happening Sunday?" i hear you cry, well, this Sunday i am taking part in the Manchester Christmas pudding race at Wythenshaw Park, 1030am for all those who want to cheer me on, its a 5 mile run, 2 laps of a course with various terrain on and off road, i have targetted to finish in under 55 minutes, thats not very fast but its my first proper run for a while so im not being too ambitious, considering ive had quite a bad calf injury i think im being sensible for once.

i will again attempt this 4.5 mile course on tuesday or wednesday and then stretch and rest before sundays race, hopefully picking up a free christmas pud and with a bit of luck a mulled wine to warm my cockles.

REMEMBER

TODAY IS REMEMBRANCE DAY, lest we forget.

today i have been for another run, that's 3 in 2 weeks, not elite running standards i know but after the injury I've had with my calf i think I'm on the right track. i set off on the same route i had been on the previous 2 times but i took a detour(deliberately, i didn't get lost) and ended up doing a mile more, 3.2 miles in total in just under 32 minutes, i was tiring at the end as i hadn't run that far for a long time but all in all I'm very pleased with the time and wasn't expecting to see that i had improved on the last run. my average pace has come down and i have now run over 30 Min's, doesn't sound a lot but i think I've got to get time and distance in my legs in order to improve more. click here to see my 3rd run

my next run should be Wednesday as I'm not working that day, i have my HGV re-test that afternoon.

IM VERY FORGETFUL

alzheimers is setting in, whilst typing out my enourmously long last blog i forgot to mention my weight, i am now down to 188lbs so a massive loss in total of 32lbs which sounds less when you say 2st 4lbs. with me starting to run now and keeping my diet in check im hoping to get even more off, im still wobbly in places so maybe that will tighten up a bit.

WHERE HAVE I BEEN??

Ive been working long, hard, 12 hour days driving around the north west of England and have had very little time or energy to do any exercise at all.
since my last blog, which seems like 21 days ago, i have been to my physio and been told to "go away"....politely and if there is no more pain and stiffness in my calf, "that i should never go again" yippee!!!! so i have to keep stretching my calfs and keep up my good work ;-)

last Monday i took the first steps toward training for my 10k "race" in Manchester next May, i had been reading a "running for beginners" magazine during my breaks on the road, that stated i should start slowly, walking 5 mins and running for  1 minute, sounded like a good plan to get me started. bearing in mind the last time i had run or should i say "tried" to run i was over 2 stone heavier and had a problem calf, so i walked about 250 yards till i got to the gates of Carey park, then i started to jog, it felt good, in fact so good i ignored or should i say "forgot" about the walking part and just kept going fully expecting to feel bad in a few hundred yards....i didn't and kept on running all the way round until i reached the gates again on the way out of the park, i walked the 250 yards back to my flat as my warm down.  click this link to view that run 
i hadn't felt so at ease running for about 20 odd years, I've never been a good runner, its always been a struggle, at school i hated cross country, i was more of a sprinter at junior school but when i went to high school i don't know what went wrong, i seemed to be running backwards compared to the others, they grew tall and i stayed a little short arse. the regular twice weekly runs when i joined the army seemed to help a lot, i felt i was improving but the disciplined routine of the army apprentice college fell away when i got my first posting to Catterick, i seemed to struggle after that, the emphasis was no longer on fitness but more on the job itself supplying the rest of the army with kit from nuts and bolts to heavy artillery and everything in between.
the days after Mondays run my legs were slightly stiff, i wasn't like a board but i knew i had done something i hadn't for a long long time, the aches gradually faded away and today, Sunday, i woke up early, my running gear was already by my bed so i got straight into running mode, put my heart monitor on, fired up my garmin forerunner 405cx and set off out of the door at walking pace to warm up a bit, it was very cold and id wished i had found my fluorescent running gloves as fingerless cycling gloves leave the extremity's of my fingers vulnerable to the nippy cold air, wimp you say!!! got to be comfortable to enjoy the run which in turn will not make it a chore to do, so that's my next task finding them!! anyway back to the run, i started running before i had reached the gates this time, i had set off on the same course as Monday thus giving me a baseline to work from to see if it had become any easier, i think i will stick to this course for a while so i can monitor any improvements, will there be any???? certainly hope so. i found it slightly harder than Monday, i don't know whether that is down to the time of day, i hadn't eaten anything before i went out, I'm not good doing exercise after eating, lets just say things don't stay down inside my body! i was fully expecting to get so far into the run and feel like i needed to stop but i seemed to develop a sense of determination and kept saying "keep going" and indeed i did, i managed not only to run all the way to the gates but all the way back to the flat. i downloaded my efforts from my garmin to my laptop, you can view the run HERE, the results are improving and i had my heart monitor on this time so i can see how much effort it is taking me in future.
so i am hoping that work will allow me to get a run in next week, in an ideal world i guess running Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday would be great, maybe i will have to get up early to achieve that.