And miles from where you are,

I lay down on the cold ground, I pray that something picks me up, and sets me down in your warm arms....

It would have been my nans birthday today. There was a time when I was a lot younger than I am now that I knew if everything went wrong I could run to the phone box over the road and do the reverse charges thing and she would tell me what to do. (She lived in london we lived in Devon) And I had to, more than once. I can only imagine how distressing it must have been to have an incoherent child ring you in the middle of the night, but she always told me what to do, or indeed did it for me, and just the sound of her voice was always enough to make me believe that we would be ok.

I was thinking about her today, as is only right. Just how lucky I was to have her and pleased that the sun was shining for her. Whitsun is always her holiday :)

Anyway, this week? 

Work, good yeah, spent some time on an assay that seems to be going well. Need to do a bit more on it this week. If you are a boxer or someone who repeatedly concusses themselves I would quite like some of your CSF. I'm sure I will get hold of something suitable :-D (I'll be in trouble now if Mr H turns up in a & e with head injuries won't I!) but I will make them get a sample.

Running....yeah good too. Did a 3k training session on Tuesday. Basically 400m intervals. It hurt. It's supposed to.

Wednesday, 1st ELVIS race. 5k over eastbrookend country park. A 3 lap trail run. I felt good, it went well. 21.47 and more importantly beating rivals.

Friday, bootcamp in freezing rain. Nice.

Saturday, parkrun. Felt quite flat and tired and J wasn't there. 21.50. Ok.

Sunday, hmp run. 2k wu, 10k 46.54 2k wd.

Today Hatfield Broad Oak 10k. What a lovely race! Felt like everyone in the village was there supporting, a real festival feel. And nearly 1300 runners.

I put myself on the 45 min line and basically went for it. It wasn't flat but no real hills, just up bits. It was hot though, but hey I like hot. I passed a couple of rivals early on and just kept working hard to keep them off. I have my watch on kilometres now so I was clocking them but not really understanding :-D I just knew if I kept the Ks below 4.30 I would PB.

I ended up with 4.26 avg and a nice PB of 44.31. Happy days!

Then a pub lunch with friends who I travelled with. Lovely bank holiday :)

Next ELVIS on Saturday :)))))

I'm so tired I can hardly think, so I'll feel instead,

And let you loose inside my head.....

Oooh. Scary :-D

Heads is very relevant. I spent Monday at a conference listening to really interesting talks about the role of inflammation in Alzheimer's. it's always been there and there have always been argument s about whether it is cause or consequence. Well obviously it's never that simple, but it is proving a very interesting area of research at the moment and I'm involved in some projects looking at just that.

I think one of the most interesting, and worrying things is that events occur so many years before onset of disease. Prevention is where you have to come at it from but well that ain't easy.

Anyway *shakes self* that's enough of that. I was off for the rest of the week. Well nearly all of it. I think I pottered really. In the gym, at home, just stuff. Was nice. I do like my own company and sometimes it's just nice to be quiet.

Thursday I went into town and met my Swedish boss for coffee and a meeting, then went to Hyde Park for a bootcamp. Was great but quite a hard one. I walked back to Tottenham Court Road down Oxford Street.......which gave me enough people contact to last the rest of the week! I got in and faffed about until the club handicap 5k which was held on Barking parkrun course. I've never done one before but it was fun, if hard work. I find it harder to push myself when I'm running sort of alone, but on the other hand you are chasing people so you do have a target. I was happy to finish in 21.31. There are 7 races in the series and I think they will be excellent for training.

I had run there and intended to run home but as I ran out of the park any energy I had left me and I just couldn't run. I had to walk home literally hanging on as I felt really shaky and sick. As I came up the stairs I was shouting for something, anything sweet to eat and Mr H saved my life with some ginger biscuits! Was weird but I guess a hard bootcamp and then a hard 5k was enough to make me bonk :-D

Friday I didn't feel all that good and although I intended to do some work I ended up sleeping most of the day. Maybe I was fighting something off? Don't know. I'm back taking iron whenever I remember now, quite paranoid about it I guess. I have reason to believe I need it.

Saturday is obv parkrun day. I felt ok but wasn't particularly going for anything apart from giving J a race. And I bloody did too! I love that running on each others shoulder thing, it really motivates you and during the last 6 weeks or so I have got to know her a little (she is really shy, and a lot younger than me) and we can laugh at things round the course, like the little old Asian man who walks round the lake with his headphones in singing something or other at the top of his voice :-D 

Anyway, the times were J 21.19 A 21.21. So I PBd and I am not at all unhappy with that.

Then we went and bought a vacuum cleaner. I bet you don't normally read that in blogs do you! I nearly got a dyson ball which costs as much as a house, but then we realised that the tesco voucher thingy doesn't do household electricals this time. Bum!!!! I was soooo excited.

It does however do BBQ equipment so we could get £400 worth of that. How fucking useful would that be, we don't have a fucking garden! I think also we could do baby stuff. Likewise. Huff.

Today was Great Baddow 10. A decent race that I have done 2 times since 2005 with a best of 1.23 or so. I won't lie. I was scared. DNFing last week upset me. Doing it again would be a disaster.

I got a lift down with club mates and that was quite pleasant, all nice people I get on with (that can be important, you want to get to a race relaxed, not having had your head talked off by someone with verbal diarrea, that has happened to me and when I turned on said person and snapped, well, they still talk about that :-D

Proper loos in the portaloos! They were ace and with girly soap and moisturiser too.....how cool is that! I moisturised my arms just cos I could!

Anyway, the race. I can't really tell you much because I ran naked. Yes you heard me, no watch. Call the press! I needed to know I wasn't going to mentally turn on myself if I looked at a mile split and was unhappy. So I ran as I felt. At 5 miles a guy was calling out times. 37.17. Okdk. That sounds alright I thought, keep at it. And I did.

At 8 I heard some familiar heavy breathing behind me. It was my club mate Vicky. Now I maintain, over short stuff I have her, but anything over 10k she is better, even though I have a better half than her. I stopped or slowed for water, she didn't I knew she wouldn't but I needed it, so she overtook me. Fair dos I thought I'm still doing ok, just keep pushing.

I did and I may or may not have just sneaked under 1.16. I don't know because I'm not on the results :( typical isn't it when I didn't wear my watch! But I'm trying to sort it.

I'm now Knackered again, and looking forward to 5k on weds night, the first in the Elvis series. I intend to hammer it!

You can't play on broken strings, you can't feel anything...

That your heart don't want to feel, I can't tell you something that ain't real......

So I can't tell you I was looking forward to today.

I wasn't. I wanted it done, I wanted it over, I wanted to be able to do the things I wanted to do.

So why, why on earth did you enter????

Lets go back to quadzilla shall we. Feb 2012, 4 marathons in 4 days that nearly broke me. I hated a lot of it for lots of reasons. After it I cancelled all my long stuff.

After a think, I decided I did want to do another mara, but properly so I went to see Russ. Russ sorted me out a plan and initially I was targeting JW Ultra. But nothing was going right, 10 minute miles were killing me, stairs would give me palpitations and a 3 mile run needed recovery days.

Aha! I finally thought when anaemia was diagnosed, thank fuck for that. I haven't got really shit, there is something wrong. So I took the tablets and thought about my diet more and from July to October saw my times improve amazingly for short stuff. Meanwhile I opted for the relay at JW and had a blast, well sort of, THAT was blogged about.

So back on track here and I decided I would target a spring mara (though I do think the name should be changed to 'supposedtobespringbutactuallymorefuckingfreezingthanthewinter' mara. And entered Brighton. I don't think I trained well over winter, but I trained and got PBs at everything up to 20 miles. I was happy, but decided to pull out of Brighton. There were reasons for this, but I now can't help feeling that I just didn't want to do a mara? Even I don't know what it thinking most of the time.

But I entered Halstead instead. A month later. Maybe I will get to run in some warm weather in training? Erm, not so much really, but there you go.

I still don't think I'm training that well. I'm loving the short fast interval type stuff, hating everything else. But well I just carried on. Thinking if I can just maintain until the day I will be fine.

And here's the thing, over the last month or so I have actually started to enjoy the longer stuff again. I think I know why. It's because I am getting stronger so I can run longer with less effort, but it was too late, I can now regularly run 5k at sub 7s. No specific training just doing it, I believe this translates up but only slowly and I will run quicker at longer distances......with time.

So today, I will be honest, the start line tingles and nerves weren't there. I felt empty. I started well enough, first 5 between 7.15 and 7.40s. But, my foot hurt on the sole. I only decided to wear flats 2 weeks ago, as my Kinvaras were giving me arch issues. Maybe they were too flat? Anyway I was still ok, but must have started to run different because my calf started to hurt. 

I was still doing ok, but by about 10 was having a new pain in my groin. Nice! I will be honest that worried me more than the other things because it was shooting pain and I had no idea what it was.

I will assume it was connected to the other two things though. Mile 13 came in at 9.10. I knew I was slowing but it really really upset me. I stopped to walk out my calf and it was really here that my race ended. (Third fastest half ever :-d) I knew I couldn't carry on like this. Nonetheless I ran the next 2 miles before my head just said no. Stop now. You are going to hurt yourself and for what? 

So I walked to a Marshall who took me to Mr H.

Race over.

Am I disappointed? Yes. Am I disappointed that I took the decision to stop when I knew I wouldn't acheive my goal? No not really. Shit happens. I've run 63 marathons. I don't need to run anymore if I don't want to.

I have received some lovely texts and tweets so thank you. I have spoken to my best running buddy, who assures me I will be awesome in future.

He's not wrong ;-)

I am now going to concentrate on the ELVIS series and the club handicap and Grand Prix. I also feel very priveliged to have been asked by someone very special to me to help him work towards running a 5k all the way. (Prob cos he thinks I will manage that without DNFing).

My legs are trashed and my calf feels like someone kicked me in it.

I know I did the right thing.

And I'm going to keep seeing Russ who is going to help me get a PROPER 5k time :)))

We were walking, walking in two worlds,

In the garden, of sunlight home, bad children on the phone.....

The first time I heard those lyrics I did a mental double take. I knew where Ash had got that from. They got it from my 14/15 year old life.

You know I love to read yeah. But not so much as I did then. I read that book so many times, in fact I read it every couple of years but I'll never read it like I did the first time when it was a proper escape. When I read it now I remember that me and how overwhelmed with grief and guilt I was and I think thank you books, for taking me away. Thank you dad and teachers for giving me the enthusiasm and thirst for reading I have always had.

I can't imagine not having that and wonder what I'd be without it. Empty? Really good at computer games? Awesome at running :-D

*shakes self* sorry! Bit of musing there, prob cos my last few runs have been with a playlist that includes that song.

Yeah running. Been good actually. Was pleased to hit hmp on Tuesdays run when I needed to and do better than mp on both subsequent runs *high five* I guess I'm as ready as I will ever be given my inherent inability to do what I'm told :-D

Friday I had to do a talk at work, it was ok but I felt bloody awful, but that's what happens isn't it, and I still felt rough at parkrun Saturday. I won't go into details but I was very upset that the loos were locked :( .......

.......and then went and ran 21.32 with my young rival only beating me by 3 seconds. Could I have run that much quicker? Maybe, but I've got my eye on next week. 5 Ks are not important right now.

Still it is a massive confidence boost to know I can do 5ks under 22 even when I don't feel great and think that when I do prepare properly I will fucking fly :-D

And and and, someone I know has been practising run walking 5k. I am very excited about this because I owe some back. Boy do I ever :)))))

And last, but not least, I mentioned reading earlier, when I was very young, Brer Rabbit was one of my fave books!!!!! (Did it, did it!)

I will see you on the other side. Hopefully.

Cos it's easy, when you know how it's done....

You can't stop now it's already begun, you feel it running through your bones......

I can certainly feel it in my bones right now. I'm a bit tired.

So, this week. Work is a bit manic. I'm involved in lots of projects and currently looking into cloning myself in order to give them all my best attention. It's ok I will get there, I'm thinking that once the marathon is over I should do some weekend work. I've done it plenty of times before and there's a saying isn't there about finding a job you love and never working a day in your life. That.

Monday I rested, Tuesday I did bootcamp, weds I did one of my planned runs and went to Barking Park to do it. It was lovely in the early morning running round the still, flat lake. I saw a big heron and a little heron too. I love them. They are like aliens, but they aren't. Cool! Thursday I ran at club.

Friday night was cool, my friend Lee turns 40 on weds and his girlfriend arranged a suprise party in a pub near work. It was my job to get him to the pub without him suspecting as we often go out for a couple of beers on a Friday night. I was proper stressed about it, but it all went very smoothly and his face was a picture when he realised that really was his brother (come down from up north) in the upstairs room at the Perseverence :-D I will admit that I celebrated quite well.

So......when I woke up at 7 on Saturday morning I was definitely not doing parkrun. Oh no. However some tea, toast and gentle encouragement oh and a bit of emotional blackmail got me up and ready. Anyone can run 5k can't they!

I didn't have any target. It was cold, and we know how I feel about that, also J from Southend was there, she is J15-19 and has previously posted 20m something 5ks so I know currently I'm not going to beat her. I was right, she posted 21.05 and I did 21.59. Not unhappy with that at all considering how I felt before. Had a lovely chat to her dad after and told him about the ELVIS series, I reckon she would enjoy those races, though I'm not sure if there are 'open' prizes. Anyway it's all experience.

Anyway, I still had 15 to do on my plan, and I'd thought I would do it Saturday but I ruined that! So I had to do it today. Which was ok, but I had swimathon 5k to do too.

How hard can it be?

Well I went to bed a little stressed about it, and as a consequence woke at 5. That's alright though it meant I had 3 hours to drink tea! Which I did. And set of at 8 for what was to be a tempo run, aiming for 8.40s. And it was great! The sun was shining, the streets were quiet and I had a great playlist :) I avgd 8.30 s and was very happy with it.

Got in showered and collapsed for a bit before heading to the pool. They had everything quite well organised so it wasn't too arduous at all and before I knew it I had set off. 5 in my lane all down for 5k. It became obvious early on that once girl was really struggling, she must have guessed her speed cos I kept having to lap her. She must have given up early because before I had done a k she was gone. My strategy was 40,40,40,20,20,10,10,10,10.

Which was ok but at 2k I had an urgent need for a wee which wouldn't go away so at 2500 I got out and went, which was nice cos I could stretch my back. I got in with renewed vigour and although I had already decided I was doing the whole thing I now knew that it wouldn't be a problem. The lane counter was brilliant, keeping me well informed of where I was (in the pool you idiot!) and one of the girls in my lane had her own cheering section at the opposite end of the pool who cheered me up no end with shouts of 'go on red hat, you're doing brilliantly!' I'm not being sarcastic there, they were really good :)

And so roughly 2 hours 10 I finished. Tired but very happy. Posed for a piccy with my medal and we came home.

I have to do dinner now!

While we're living,

The dreams we had as children fade away....

They do don't they. I'm trying to remember mine -

The things I remember really really wanting to do as a child. (In no particular order)




1. Find the way out the back of my wardrobe. (Couldn't)
2. Sail in a pirate ship. (Nans rocking chair turned upside down made an ace pirate ship)
3. Own a grifter bike (never happened)
4. Play in a Wimbledon final where I had a real opponent. (You're right, that never happened either)
4. Be able to swim (taught myself as no one else seemed interested)
5. Run in an Olympic 1500m final against seb Coe and Steve Ovett. (There are a number of problems with this one)
6. Be really good at skateboarding so that Mrs Laramys grandson would think I was cool. (I think I was about 9 and he was 15 or something. Never gonna happen)
7. Become a doctor who didn't actually have to deal with real people. (Bingo not at all in the way I thought it would happen, I thought I might go to med school and become Quincy)
8. Get my first proper wages and be able to buy my nan something decent (yep, that's a good feeling isn't it )
9. Live beyond 20. (If you are going to have goals it's always an idea to make them achievable. This once seemed like a decent age to aspire to)
10. Run a marathon. (I'm saying nothing here)

There you go, a good round number of things.

I keep doing number 10. Now you either keep doing them because you honestly love the anticipation of slogging your guts out for hours in pain, or because you want to do it properly.

I used to enjoy the former, in that weird masochistic way that runners have. The racking up of another marathon was key, didn't matter if it was ugly, didn't matter how long it took as long as you finished. Job done.

Yesterday whilst running with two of my best running mates I realised so completely and utterly that I am no longer that type of runner it is almost funny. So I am not going to look on it as a DNF, but rather a DWWN and then gracefully conceded. I may have plagarised someone's thoughts a bit here, but you said what I felt so perfectly :)

So I can move on to my last 3 weeks training before Halstead. This week still fairly hard and then 2 weeks taper. I would say I'm looking forward to it but I'm not sure that's true. I am looking forward to giving it everything I have. I want to look at myself in the mirror after and be able to know I don't have to do it again because I left it all out there.

Yeah, I'm not sure if that made sense!

Anyway, loving seeing people so happy with results yesterday, and those not so will come to terms with it, running London is special and one year I am going to run it with no goal at all, just to take in the sights and sounds and I'm going to stop where the supporters are drinking outside the pubs and ask for some :-) and then I will stop at every water stop and cheering point where I know somebody. Just how cool a day would that be?

Onwards.

How do you sleep?

How do you last the night and keep the dogs at bay?
How do you feel, when you close your eyes and try an drift away?

That's not even about her. It used to be about someone I knew as a kid. Now someone else has the honour. Not worth the dirt from my shoes. A lesson that sometimes your first instincts are the right ones.

Anyhow, moving on.

Had a good week. Very busy, but with some great high points :))) I managed to run in to work from home. You would think that reversing a route would be easy. Not in my head it isn't. But still. I did it.

Gym stuff is going well. Well apart from that mad woman I keep seeing, who really just wants a chat, but I wish she would do it when I have my clothes on :-D

Accidental Friday night drinks again. I used to do that every Friday but have been really good lately, I mustn't do it too often! It makes parkrun hurt. Though this week it wasn't too bad. 21.51 which is decent but second lady because B from Ilford turned up. I have only ever beat her once and that was at 5k but I'm working on it. Oh yes.

Then today was East London half. Got a lift from Andy and Vicky from BRR, so that was painless. And Vicky stood in the bag q for me while I went to the loo. Already fairly long queues I noted, but no matter I got in and got my bag stored. Then it seemed to be a bit of confusion because the 10k should have started but it didn't. Loads of people milling about not sure what to do. The baggage queue was massive by now full of both 10k and half runners. I decided to go loo again, but with 2 minutes to my start I had to leave and get to my pen. The 10k had obviously started now without anyone realising because lots of people in the toilet queue started running that way.

They let the pen in front of mine walk to the start but told us to wait. We waited, and waited and waited a bit more. I now HAD to go to the loo so I darted out to the portaloos and realised whilst I was there that they had set my lot off. Oh well, it's chip timed.

I ran to the start and started my watch as I crossed the line.....alone! I'm not really sure what was going on. Then for a lap round the park. Where both shoelaces came untied at different points. I'm sorry if you were near me. I did swear a lot.

Then out onto the first lap. It was ok. My head was a bit gone right from the start because I had no idea where I was in terms of runners around my speed.....does that make sense? I saw in the distance a dag 88 girl who I knew was slower than me so I made it my target to catch her. I duly did and must have seen here about 6 more times due to the tooing and froing of the course. After 11k you ended up back in the park. I was very very thirsty because I hadn't been able to suss out the water stations, and really wanted to give up but a conversation on twitter the night before meant I couldn't :-D I realised I couldn't suss the stations because mainly there were hardly any marshals on them. Those that were couldn't cope with all the runners so you would go for a bottle and they would give it to someone else! I'm not blaming volunteers but they needed more and they needed to know what to do. 2 of them dropped the bottle before I could grab it. I ended up getting a bottle off a wall where someone had discarded it at one point.

So I did finish, 1.43.44. I should be pleased with that. It's my second fastest half ever, but I just didn't enjoy it. It should have been a fast course, for me it wasn't.

I was well supported though by old and new club mates and after went to meet up with a load of BRR runners in Barking for some tea. I was very hungry but couldn't eat as my stomach was starting to feel bad. I have spent most of the rest of the day either in bed or curled up on the sofa with horrible stomach cramps. I'm assuming it was hydration issues because I had normal breakfast and dinner the night before. Hopefully I have learned some lessons.

1. Double knot your fucking laces you idiot!
2. Look harder for water, stupid.

I've been very pleased to read about friends completing Brighton. Some good PBs, all good efforts :)

I think that's it. I need to go to bed and wake up tomorrow feeling good :)