Tuesday, 8 January 2013

New Years Run-olutions…

So somehow we reached 2013 whilst I blinked. 2013 full of new year promise, full of people on diets, full of people making resolutions they won’t keep and full of Marathon training for moi!

For the umpteenth time, I ask…WHAT possessed me?
The really strange thing for me was the ‘desire’ to go for a run on Christmas Day. Never experienced that feeling before and swiftly pushed it into the brain compartment marked ‘don’t ever flipping think that again’. ‘Friends and Family’ were all like-minded in their Christmas gifts towards me….clearly they realised I would need a lot of Marathon-related gear going into this year for sure.  I thus swiftly received several crates of ‘fizz’ through the post. Hmnnn, perhaps they were thinking of post-marathon related gifts in retrospect. I wasn’t convinced though and have always been told you should never look a gift horse in the mouth…so clearly I drank it all.

So I now have an awful lot of headway to make.
On the approach to 2013 my basic plan was to:

·         Get some trainers

·         Find my old running stuff

·         Go ON an actual run

·         Try to maintain this 3 times a week

·         Cut out alcohol

As we go forwards my plan now looks something like this:

·         Go running

·         Stop drinking

·         Go running again

·         Cut down drinking considerably

·         Go running even more

·         Confine drinking to weekends

·         GO RUNNING GO RUNNING GO RUNNING

It’s just a clear basic fact that my only real plan going forwards IS to just get out there and keep on training as much as possible. This is invariably hard when mornings are eliminated for you (school run), daytime is eliminated for you (work)  and nighttimes ‘should’ be eliminated for you (kids, eat, kids, watch telly, kids, bedtimes, kids AGAIN (get back in bed) and did I say it….kids?)
Don’t be telling me to go running at lunchtimes as I’m just NOT that kinda gal. I can’t do the whole get changed, go running around the city looking like a plum in broad daylight, get back and get washed and changed again and then RE-apply flipping make-up before promptly returning to my desk out of breath and fit for nothing. There ‘are’ some women who can pull this off with ease….I’m just not one of them unfortunately. I’m more a kind of skulking around in the dark, panting out of breath, running at my own pace without fear of being recognised kinda gal…which will probably be why I got police-checked last week (totally true). Jamie (my ever loving Husband) wondered if this was them simply trying to see if the ‘face matched the bum’. A) I hope not and B) I hope not!

I am trying to ‘jazz up’ my running plan somewhat too. I play little games along the way like:

·         Count the houses up for sale on my route

·         Spot the best house exterior and make mental notes on how to copy it

·         Pull the funniest face I can whilst running face on towards people

·         Pretend to have really cool conversations on my mobile mid-stretch as people walk past me

·         And pre-Christmas I tried to do the whole route several times with non-stop Christmas Carols – out loud!
I’m not going to deny that this IS hard though. I jest, but it’s seriously hard to get home from work having missed the little ones like crazy and then tell them Mummy has to go out again for a run. I am trying to do nightime ones either during their dinner or just after they go to bed. At weekends I’m trying to go straight out and do it as soon as I’m up so that I’m back before they finish breakfast (my kids eat a lot!)…and in the main this is working for me. I even flipping drank soft drinks at my mate’s 40th birthday last week as I’m trying to prove to myself ‘I can do this’.

The thing is…I CAN do this.  My new year’s resolution sorry ‘run-olution’ is to stop berating myself so much on this score. I am if nothing, a stubborn cow …and I reckon stubbornness will get me through 90% of that London Marathon.
The last thing I wondered was if I could do my training indoors on the Wii-Fit?

No? Oh well….off to play ‘Knock Down Ginger’ then…it’s a great running game apparently!

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