I may not of been a prolific blogger, but I have still been out running and so I guess that is really the important thing. So what have I achieved so far this year?
March saw me reaching my 55th birthday so to celebrate that milestone I went for a 5.5 mile run, at the end my son Mark presented me with my very own set of tags, if you follow the link to Mark's blog you will see that I brought him tags in December when he did 34 miles for his 34th birthday.
My next challenge began at the end of March, I signed up for the 5x50
this challenge is to do 5k or 30 minutes exercise everyday for 50 days, you can run, walk, jog or crosstrain. This was great fun and really made a difference to my fitness levels. This took me till nearly the end of May to complete and then it was time to focus on the Race for Life, the event that had been the reason for me to start running in the first place (more on that later)
Nearly forgot there was one more special event, My one year anniversary of running, Mark and I were due to go out for our weekly run anyway but Mark suggested we go back to the Parkrun course that we had used for my graduation run. It was a really warm evening and I was struggling to breathe in the humid conditions, Mark was pushing me hard, it was only towards the end when he was really trying to keep me going that he confessed that he was trying to get me to beat my PB (personal best) I can honestly say it's the first time since starting that I came really close to throwing up......which Mark seemed to find hilarious..........But thanks to his well lets just call it encouragement I did beat my PB when we got back to the car Mark presented me with this:
So back to the Race for Life..........The big day arrived and off we went, to be honest I was a little nervous, I had built this up in my head as being the run that I had to complete non-stop as fast as I could, however on the day this was not to be. There was so many people that finding a clear space to run was harder than I had imagined. I found myself constantly getting stuck behind groups of people holding hands as they ran blocking most of the path or mums with their kids in buggies, at first I was really frustrated but then after having to stop and walk to allow myself to find a gap between people I knew that I needed to just chill out and enjoy the run no matter what, otherwise it was going to be such a dissapointment. There will be other days for me to run fast or slow run/walk or just run, but the most important part of the Race for Life day was to be part of the great experience of running with nearly 3,000 others all trying to support the fight against Cancer.
So there you have it, almost caught up to the present day. I could promise to post more often, but do you know what? sometimes life just gets in the way.....
Plans for the future...........
9th & 10th August - Volunteering at CP11 - NDW100 by Centurion Running
20th September - Crew for Mark at Tooting 24 - 24hrs to run round a track as many times as possible
11th October Fowlmead Challenge - 6 hours running round 2.67 mile laps
