The futures bright, the futures Grim

The want and need to sign up for races that are a little bit different than the norm has today, made me sign up for what was without doubt, one of my favourite races last year. Yes, the mud, water and freezing temperatures will once again be in my sights as Grim'10 has been paid for and I'll be there on the Saturday along with eatingtrees. I'm already excited about it! Enough to be thinking about Hellrunner too...

However, the important issue of mine and eatingtree's (& possibly LG and crying bump's) foreign half marathon janut for 2011 is still to be decided. Prague was awesome but tough with the cobbles, Lisbon was lovely with the exception of the 13.1 miles in the middle of the trip so next year.... It could possibly be one of these which frankly, look beautiful or disturbing, depending on which one you click on! The Lausanne Half Marathon, the Polar Night Half Marathon or the Midnight Sun Half Marathon are the current options!

Obviously I need to get myself pounding the pavement again soon which I guess I'll try on Monday as we don't have to go to work or next week sometime. Firstly, I have the small matter of a 25-30 mile cycle ride tomorrow morning in 'training' for L2B. I have a feeling that by the time I finish, every part of my being is going to wish I'd kept some gears on the damn thing. Eatingtrees has sorted the course and says things like 'it's a mix of everything with a few hills thrown in for good measure'. Oh good. no really. Joy!

Myself, LG & bump have also found somewhere new to live so we just have to pack up the entire flat now and move it to the country. I'll no longer be in London which is great for many reasons. The reason it won't be is I have a lot of new route planning to do and I can't even avoid the hills if I don't know where I'm going!

Race for Life - The publicity piece!

I had an email today that I very nearly just read and deleted. You see, it was regarding the Race for Life and as I have testicles my first thought was that it was nothing to do with me, it being a women only event and all. But I had a nagging in the back of my head. So I decided to write something for it anyway.

It's a huge and well known event where thousands upon thousands of women walk or run 5k all across the country all in aid of Cancer Research UK. I've heard from people who have been involved in this before and it's not to do with the distance or the run. It's the camaraderie between the participants, the memories of loved ones they are doing it for and that it brings everyone together. Cancer will effect everyone in their lives in some form. So far, I've been bloody lucky and haven't really directly known anyone affected by this hideous disease. I know it won't be forever though so I'm all for money going to charities that research this kind of thing. That's the reason I'm given this some publicity.

Yesterday Tesco, who generally I wouldn't give that much time to, launched a website and forum aimed at bring people together and if it gets people together and encourages people who want to swap tips, tricks and training methods then who am I to argue. It's over at www.tescosupportsraceforlife.co.uk so once you've found your local event and signed up via the Race for Life website, get some sponsorship and head over to the new forum and get involved. For any men reading, show some encouragement, give them some cash and maybe even do some volunteering on the day. You can spare a couple of hours right?

Hauling My Wheels

Well I'll be honest. I haven't run since my last attempt ended in a hop, skip, jump attempt when pain shot through the inside of my left knee. Most of the time it seems ok but again yesterday night after I'd done about 3 hours of driving, the same spot was pretty sore. Not sure what I've done but I'm figuring that resting it is the best way forward for now as I have nothing coming up in the near future.

Cycling however is something I've done a bit more of. After the new inner tube arrived and was fitted, I cycled home from work on Friday (I think it helped what can only be described as the hangover from hell) and then the weekend came. The beautiful, sunny and almost warm weekend. This meant that on Saturday, I embarked on the longest cycle ride of my life I think. I certainly can't remember ever going any further! 16.23 miles was completed at a relaxed pace and I got home with the clock saying I'd been out for an hour and 20 mins. I'm happy with that. I certainly won't be doing L2B at a quicker pace. I even felt fine the next day which I figure is a good indication!

Along with cycling to work a couple of days this week (I'd like it to be more but meetings and car servicing have got in the way of that), I'm going to take my bike back to my parents this weekend and clock up some miles there. In theory I won't be doing that alone as my Mum has also been getting some miles in on her bike so hopefully I'll have some company. As long as she's not on the golf course anyway!

LG and 'the bump' are doing well and we had the 20 week scan last week and everything's great so far. I'm loving the cycling and according to theredbucket, I can eat loads of eggs for breakfast and it may actually do me some good. So apart from the left knee, all is pretty damn good in HMC land.

Reading back, that's quite a positive post from me. Considering the best feedback I've ever had from a post is when I had an absolutely retched time at the Lisbon Half, I figure you guys like me to suffer and this one isn't going to go down half as well.

Running again. Good! Pain. Bad!

So I finally got my trainers back on today in an effort to get myself into some sort of shape other than the 'round' one that I currently reside in. It was nice to know it would be a short, easy and nice run to blow some cobwebs away and to work off some huge quantities of food I seem to have devoured recently. It was also a chance to try out an iPhone (or iPod Touch in my case) holder that I'd been sent by MobileFun. It does work and is usable through the front (although why would it need to be if you're trying to run?!?) but having anything on my arm for that amount of time seems to weigh it down and therefore make it ache more anyway. For now, I'll be sticking to the Shuffle!

I planned on the Wimbledon common out and back route that I used to do mainly because after the initial slight incline, it was all flat. It was the first time in a long time that I didn't run with my calf support on as I wanted to see if all was better in the shin and calf pain area. As it stands, there is no pain other than a standard aching. Well on my calf anyway.

I seemed to have a slight pain along the inside of my left knee but again, I knew I was out of shape and just (k)needed to carry on. It wasn't like I was going fast! Anyway, all went well until just after 3 and a half miles where I had to pull up sharply due to the pain suddenly shooting straight through my knee.  It hurt. A lot!! I walked for a bit and then tried to run but it was having none of it.

For a second I thought I was in trouble but I'm delighted to say that after a 20 min walk down to the shops, it seems to be a bit better. Something to be aware of for the next couple of runs though. In the end, the 'running' part of my run was 3.59 miles in 31:10 which works out at 8:40's.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try and get into double figures on the bike in some pre-training training for L2B.  After reading about the route on this very good site I found, I may need to consider changing to an easier gear ratio for all those hills. If it's not about speed then I may as well try and pedal up some of them!!!