on your marks...

For those of you who have ever met me, and with that horrible photo of me at Glasto last year as inspiration, I have decided that 2010 is going to be my year of change. So, after running the Mud and Fun run (there is very little fun in being wet and freezing cold in the beginning of February running through streams and muddy trenches, however felt a great sense of achievement!)

I decided that that I needed a challenge and my boss Julia, and Amy from our office had already decided to run the Guernsey Marathon in August this year and I jumped in feet first. More people are joining our cause, and at the moment, we are also signing up to run the Guernsey half marathon in June, the World Aid Walk and we are going inter island to join our chums in Jersey for their 1/2 in May :) Ooof!

This will be a training record of every scrape, bump and how grim things are for us or freakishly how lovely we are feeling at the end. We'll set ourselves targets, add photos of where we are and scary running smilishness at the end of the run. Oooh yeah!

And I will try to update it every day, even if it's just what I ate, just because I want it to be a real real thing and hopefully inspire me to get my running shoes on and get out there!

I am doing all the runs for Charidee of course as I would like to raise a serious amount of cash to buy morphine distribution units for paliatitive care patients. As you may be aware, my very dear Grandmother passed away last year, and although her care was great, the nurse did ask us to check on the unit to make sure the light was on, otherwise she wouldn't be having relief. I don't want anyone else to have to do that, or worse, the patients themselves. So... for my darling Granf, I will do runnings.

The first stage was to read some books. We read:-

4 Months to a 4 Hour Marathon
Nonrunner's Marathon Guide for Women: Get Off Your Butt and on with Your Training
The Marathon and Half Marathon: A Training Guide

We are very much loving Dawn's book the Nonrunners Marathon Guide for Women, which is v. v funny indeed, but also sensible. Thoroughly enchanted by concept of spandex until imagined it on self! However deeply worried about : Chafing, the need for 2 sports bras, short shorts and wicker tops :)

The one thing that all the books seem to to agree on is that you should train seriously for the 4 months leading up to your Marathon. The Guernsey Marathon is on Sunday the 29th August 2010 so that means serious traning will start in April... Not going into it blindly of course, my little flannish self has been doing walking, running (yes admittedly not that anyone else would recognise as running) and with my beloved and a couple of friends. Yoga classes and I even tried Karate- I am too good at it, will surely kill beloved with a badly aimed kick, so I have joined the Healthy Gym and am going with some chums at different points in the week. Many many of family and friends are finding entire concept of me doing anything more than walking to the bar a hillarious idea but I am being strong and focussed. So focussed in fact that I am giving up my favourite thing in the whole wide world, my lovely, lovely cigs. This is in attempt to allow me to breathe, but also highlights the seriousness of my dedication to the cause of running hundreds of miles over the next few months.

I may even do a map of how far I have excercised in a bid to make my beloved agree to a hot holiday in September :)

Anyway, keep the faith, and I shall update you as often as I can.

Much love, and blister socks

Gwenf
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