Fuerteventura

Arrived in Fuerteventura 5 days ago. Lovely and warm with clear blue skies! So nice to be away from the cold in England. The facilities up at Play Itas are fantastic - outdoor 50m pool, nice gym, some great marked out running trails...!

Out here for almost 11 weeks! I feel so lucky. Although I had to say goodbye to Dan yesterday and won't see him now until he comes out again in 6 weeks time.

Cold!

A much needed rest after the marathon. Even if I'd wanted to run I couldn't. It was painful enough walking let alone running for most of the week. 2 days after the race and I had tickets to a rock concert with my sister! Really good night but not the same when you can hardly move!! A good Christmas and light training but freezing cold which I really can't deal with. Lots of cycling on the turbo - boring! as too icy to go outside. Bring on the 12th of Jan!!!

My Debut Marathon - La Rochelle

The big day has arrived! Up at 6.15am and feeling nervous and excited. Looked out the window and it looked like it was snowing but actually it was sleeting and thankfully no snow on the ground!

7.45 and an easy jog - felt slightly milder out than yesterday so changed my mind on wearing a t.shirt under my vest top.

5 mins before the race start and I'm at the start line - I'm in the elite women's start! Now feeling really happy and looking forward to running!

9am and the gun goes! I'm near the front and count 6 girls and 1 man in front of me (our start was all women and men over 50 with elite women and a few men at the front - there was a separate start line for all men under 50). I'm running alongside another girl and it feels like I'm jogging. After 1k I look at my watch - a touch quicker than I planned - oops! I keep at this pace with the other girl and at 2k look again - still too quick so I back off a bit. Any faster at this point will mean a lot of pain later! The other girl encourages me to stay with her but for all I know she might be aiming for around 2hrs 30 so I back off.

After 3 or 4k we join up with the men from the other start and I get into a nice group of about 15 men and this really helps to pull me along. My splits are still looking quicker than I planned by around 10-15s per km but it feels so easy! Around 10k it starts to rain a bit and the course took us down a road with quite a lot of puddles. About 1k later my thighs started to feel really cold. Just before halfway my thighs started to hurt. I've done a few half marathons before and never had this pain. I just decided that I can't expect to run a marathon and not feel any pain so I tried my best to ignore it. I went through half marathon in 1hr 20.30. This is around my half marathon pb! It felt so easy. My legs were hurting but everything else was feeling great. I wasn't tired, my breathing wasn't heavy and I was enjoying myself!!

Just after 21k the group of men sped up and I decided to run my own race and stay at the pace I was at which was still much faster than I'd planned.

At 28k my legs were killing me and I was aware that my splits were getting slower. I just kept pushing 1k at a time. I really badly wanted to stop and massage my legs to warm them up but knew that if I did this there was a good chance I might not be able to start running again.

For the last few kms quite a few men came past me - all with encouragement. I tried so hard to pick up the pace for the last km and was so relieved to finally see the towers and then the finish line. I was so happy to get there and really surprised as I looked up at the clock as I crossed the line and saw my time - 2 hrs 51.30. I really thought I'd faded to about 2hrs 58! As soon as I stopped my legs wanted to give way and 2 officials had to hold me up! I was looking everywhere for Dan, Dave and Cathy and finally saw them. I was so happy and by the looks of it so were they!

Later today as I write this blog so many thoughts are going through my head. I am really pleased with how I did today. My aim was for a sub 3hr and I have easily achieved this. My training has indicated that I would run just under 2hr 50 and if you look at my splits it will look like I started off too fast and died. I honestly think that if I had started of at 4mins per km pace as planned that I still would have lost 10 mins in the 2nd half due to cold legs cramping up and probably would have finished with a time just under 3hrs or even just over so I don't think I started off too fast. But I am now thinking that if I hadn't been so cold on my thighs I could have gone under 2hrs 45 which would have been amazing.

At the start of the race a girl went ahead of me wearing 3/4 length tights and I thought that was a bit silly but I now think that that is exactly what I should have been wearing! I'm sure my legs wouldn't have cramped up if I had been. Its all a learning experience and next time I will know to plan for all weather conditions!

Marathon de La Rochelle was a fantastic event - well organised, lots of support and flat!

10 days to go!

The good news is I've so far managed to avoid Dan's illness and now he has gone away with work for a few days and hopefully he will be completely over it by the time he gets back!

The bad news is a funny tummy since the weekend and was actually sick yesterday! I'm thinking its either a dodgy Nandos that I ate on Saturday night or possibly too much vit C! I have overdone the vit C a bit in my paranoia to not catch Dan's flu. Anyway, after being sick I now feel a lot better. A few days training missed but doesn't matter now as all my hard work is done and I've started tapering now.

My training has all gone to plan and gone really well. Everything is on course and I should be able to achieve my goal of sub 3 hours. My training has been indicating that I can get under 2hrs 50 but I think with this being my first attempt I shouldn't get too carried away as there will be other races in the future to do this!

3 weeks to go!

I have less than 3 weeks to go and Dan is now ill with serious man flu. I keep thinking if I get a cold now I can probably get rid of it in time but then how much will it take out of me for running a marathon? I could maybe get away with it for a 10k but not so sure about 26 miles! I'm dosing up on lots of vit C and echinacea. He has also been banished to the front room!

Why now? He never gets ill.

5 weeks to go!

Most people can probably think of better ways to spend their birthday but for me doing my longest run ever so far this morning was a great start to my birthday! The weather was crap though but once I'd gone past 10 mins of running it didn't bother me.

So far my training is going well and I'm loving my long Saturday morning runs. I really thought that running for over 2 hours I would be bored and clock watching but I'm not finding that at all. I've found some nice places to run away from traffic with gravelly ground which is perfect for running on.

An afternoon sleep now and hopefully Dan is taking me somewhere nice tonight!!

Peterborough Half

Rubbish run today! I did the Peterborough Half Marathon and really can't believe how rubbish I ran! When the race started my legs felt like they were burning for the first 1km. They settled down but just felt tired for the whole race. I finished 10th in a time of 81 mins!

When I entered this race about a month ago I decided on this one because it was flat and I thought I would be tapering for it and going for a time. In hindsight I should have entered one that was nearer to home on the same weekend but undulating. With only 8 weeks to go until my marathon my coach said it was more important to get my training in and not worry how I do here. So I didn't even ease back slightly in my training load and no rest days!