Chocfest...

a strange day with surprising results!

No longer having to sort day care for C and H (to be fair it's been a while!) we now find ourselves having to consider what to do with the dogs if both Al and I are going to be out.  Sid is no problem, he will happily go around to my parents and spend the day being fed biscuits and curling up in the warmth of their heating always on home,  Dougal on the other hand requires a bit more exercise and entertainment and so gets sent to Doggie Daycare! (oh yes - such a thing does indeed exist!).

Dropped off by Al this morning, I had a blissful hour being able to leave food lying around without worrying that when I returned it would no longer be there, before going to pick up HMG and head up to York for the juggling convention.

The set up was a little different to Leeds, and we were asked to set up in the foyer. This was great in giving HMG and I the ideal location to sit with a cup of tea and have a long overdue catch up, but wasn't great for business, I think I painted four faces.  To be fair there weren't many children there, which also led to zero interest in our crafting activities, apart from one lucky lady who's partner was arriving home on Saturday night with one of our craft bags as a present (I think she may have preferred some cake!).

As there was no facilities for food on site, or indeed in the vicinity of the school I had wrongly assumed that we would do a roaring trade, but in reality what it meant was that everyone had brought their own supplies and our baking trade was far from brisk!

Just when all seemed to be lost, and another day was set to be written off as a fundraising fiasco, people started coming to donate money for what would otherwise have been free T-shirts! Confused to say the least, it transpired that on learning what we were doing, one very kind lady had written a note next to the T-shirts saying that donations were to be made to us! Kerching!!

That, and a trip round the hall with the baking and a begging box (thank you Al and HMG) saw us come home with a whopping and quite unbelievable eighty three pounds! A further donation by Doggie Daycare who wouldn't take payment and then gave me a further tenner on top and I've made the sixteen hundred pound mark! Whooooo Hooooooo!!! Very very happy with this, and definitely not going to let it be tainted by the fact that my cake didn't score a mention let alone a prize - heathens!

M - 465

Brighton Half - 22
Liverpool Half - 134

Glasgow Half - 246
Total Distance covered   460 miles

Off-line

For four days?!!

Somewhere between Thursday night and Friday morning, our internet connection died. I have no doubt that both C and H could probably give me an exact time, both still being awake and in all probability using the internet but I was asleep and didn't discover this predicament until this morning. The fact that neither of them woke me up to tell me that their broadband dependable world had come to an abrupt end makes me assume that it was somewhere around midnight and that they knew the response they would have got would have been to go to sleep!

No internet in the wee small hours I can live without - not having an engineer come to fix it until MONDAY is a different consideration altogether! (sense would have told me to write my blog anyway and post it when I could - the fact that it is now Wednesday and I've only just started playing catch up tells you I didn't listen!). Thankfully I had more than enough to be getting on with on Friday not to miss it - until it came to sorting out directions for tomorrow (more on that later).

Unable to get to the gym because I was waiting for the boiler man (different part - that'll be £262 please) it was like living in a bakery! Three batches of fairy cakes cooked and stored out of Dougal's reach to cool, enough cake salvaged from yesterdays mishap that now needed decorating and a fresh batch of brownies to bake after C went off to a GB Training weekend with the ones I baked yesterday. All that was needed now was some hungry jugglers tomorrow when we got to Chocfest.

And there in lay the problem with no internet - no way of looking up where we were going and the sinking realisation that C had been allowed to rip the pages out of our road map for some art project several years ago and we've never got around to getting a new one! Thankfully HMG has a SatNav she can bring, and Al has discovered that he can get SatNav on his phone - oh how slowly we are entering the twenty first century!

Cake decorated, baking boxed up, face paints retrieved from where they were stashed (almost) out of sight on top of our wardrobe, arts and crafts box brought down from the same hiding  place, and we're good to go!  Bit apprehensive having not painted a face since my one day as a face painter in November but oh well.... here goes!

M - 466

Brighton Half - 23
Liverpool Half - 135

Glasgow Half - 247
Total Distance covered   460 miles

DOG FOR SALE

FREE TO GOOD HOME....

I am completely done with the weather.  The weather app showed snowfall overnight, which raised everyone's hopes of a day off school today, and put my attendance at the funeral of a close friend's mum in question. The overnight snow didn't come, disappointing all three of my boys and making me miss them all the more, but the early morning snow arrived as forecast, played havoc with the roads, gridlocked the traffic and led to the decision that driving to the funeral wasn't worth the risk.  But I wanted to be there, and I'm sorry that I wasn't, right decision or otherwise.

Busy morning baking for my cake stall at the weekend, and also my entry for the legendary Chocfest chocolate cake competition. Having spent last week perfecting my Quinoa cake I had high hopes for it at least scoring a mention on Saturday night. Not to be however, unless I get time to bake another - whilst on the phone to the boiler company and giving them my credit card details so they can deduct two hundred and sixty pounds out of my account, if the reason the boiler is dripping water into the kitchen isn't the same fault as last time - Dougal snuck in and ate the cake!

Feeling thoroughly fed up I went for a walk hoping that I might be able to walk off my glum mood in the winter sunshine.  Half way round and the weather changed, the sky darkened and before we knew it we were being blasted by horizontal hailstones, whilst watching the clouds whip across the sky chasing down what little bit of blue there was, until we were caught in the middle of a blizzard with visibility down to about twenty feet.  By the time we got home however it had moved on, and the sky was once again blue.

I love watching the sky, knowing that even when it's grey and miserable there is blue behind just waiting for a chance to show it's face, and I think that what's today was trying to show me. Things might feel a bit difficult at the moment but they will pass, we've just got to hold on to our belief that better times are on their way, and weather the storm in the meantime.

On arriving home, I spotted our first flower of the year in the garden. One solitary snowdrop peaking up above the snow.  Decided that it might make a nice photograph for my blog, a sign that spring is on it's way, and it would have done, if, whilst investigating what I was up to, Dougal hadn't trodden on it! Pointer anyone?!

M - 467

Brighton Half - 24
Liverpool Half - 136

Glasgow Half - 248
Total Distance covered   460 miles

Willpower

Finding what it takes...

Tired having been up since four with the dogs, worried about the snow that was forecast during the day (but didn't arrive), exceptionally busy baking for Chocfest on Saturday and in need of making a card so I can get an overdue gift off in the post, I found myself making all manner of excuses as to why I didn't have the time to go to the gym today, but on the other hand I knew that I had to go. It was as much about a statement of intent as anything else.  I had to prove to myself that I could do it, however much I didn't want to.

Gym program printed out I discovered that there were a couple of things on there that I couldn't remember doing - either I have erased the memory or they paled into insignificance next to the other exercises! Message requesting clarification fired off to the Biomechanics Man all I could do was sit and wait.... unfortunately he replied almost immediately and that was that excuse blown out of the water! In the end it was the (wrongly) forecast heavy snow shower early afternoon that made me just get on with it and go this morning.

I can't say I enjoyed it, but I'm glad I went.  Still hate the rope waggle, and had to suffer the humiliation of pushing the Geoff Capes past a fit looking woman on a cross trainer, but hey she might not have looked quite so flash if she was moving the equivalent of two sacks of dog food along the floor!

It was hard forcing myself to stick to the full number of sets and repetitions per set, but I'm proud to say I didn't cheat! Not for the first time I wished that I could afford to have a personal trainer there every time I go, but perhaps finding the willpower to make me do it is an important part of it too.

There are three quotes adorning one of the walls, one from Arnold Schwarzenegger (really?), another from Rocky Balboa (who isn't even real!) and finally one that I can relate to....

First title fight - The Brighton Half Marathon Finisher!

M - 468

Brighton Half - 25
Liverpool Half - 137

Glasgow Half - 249
Total Distance covered   460 miles

100 Marathon Club

Any takers?!

Walking the dogs this afternoon and I caught myself in the midst of a daydream about becoming a member of the One Hundred Marathon Club - one day in the gym and apparently I think I'm ready for anything! A sharp return to reality when I realised that I'd have to live to one hundred and forty five, or ninety five, or seventy eight  - which might be doable but would mean running three marathons a year, every year, between now and then! I think I'd better stick with the One Hundred Parkrun Club - and even that milestone isn't going to happen if I don't get back out there and run. So, with very heavy legs and a somewhat painful gluteus maximus I set out on my first three mile run (and walk) in a fortnight.

It wan't easy.  I didn't enjoy having to walk, and I was very tempted to try and run the whole thing, but I forced myself to follow the advice that I'd been given and do as I was told for once! I think I should have taken a watch with me and been a bit more methodical in my intervals of walking and running, instead of just walking all the steep bits, but I made it round WITHOUT KNEE PAIN! Unlike my backside, which following yesterday's gym session is in agony and has made sitting less pleasurable than it once was! That said if it wasn't for the pain, perhaps I might have been able to convince myself that yesterday was a bad dream! Or rather a recurring nightmare as I'm due to go back tomorrow!

M - 469

Brighton Half - 26
Liverpool Half - 138

Glasgow Half - 250
Distance covered            3.1 miles

Total Distance covered   460 miles

What have I done?!

I want my previous life back!

HUGE excitement last night - a reply to my blog from the podcast man! Equally huge crash back down to earth this morning when it started to dawn on me that all the blog readers and Twitter followers in the world were not going to be able to help me with the next part of my campaign, there is no one who can do this next bit for me, and I suddenly felt very small and very alone. Except that I wasn't.  The Biomechanics Man was waiting for me at the gym with my program all ready for me - nothing else for it but to bite the bullet and start!

I should perhaps point out that the gym is a far cry from anything you will have ever seen in a hotel, or sports complex, and is instead in an old mill with lots of space and although there are some conventional pieces of gym equipment I didn't get anywhere near them!

The benefit of having my gym program written by my biomechanics coach is that he knows exactly what I need to do, the bad bit is that this involved starting off with a bit of tennis ball rolling! If I felt ungainly on my bedroom floor, it's nothing to how I felt doing it in public! Worse was to come with some strange squat crab move, where I had to maneuver myself across the floor sideways whilst maintaining a squat - this might work wonders for setting me up for my exercises but did nothing for my self esteem!

Squats whilst holding a kettle bell, pelvic lifts with my feet on a stool, a strange pulling myself up using some straps exercise, an equally alien core strengthening thing, some one legged balancing act that I couldn't do for toffee, a side to side over a step which should have been easy but made me feel extremely unfit, all finished off with some hideous rope waggling, where I wasn't strong enough to get the wave to the end of the rope and the car push... only it wasn't a car but some custom built piece of ironwork which I had to push along the length of the gym and back again, like some contestant on Worlds Strongest Man and from here on in I shall think of as the Geoff Capes exercise!

I don't think the Biomechanics Man has ever had anyone turn up for their induction with less enthusiasm, nor look at him with such an expression of disdain bordering on hatred (and here was me thinking a Sports Massage was the top tool in his torture repertoire!). Like I said as I left, I may thank him one day, but not today, and certainly not tomorrow when I try to get out of bed!

Shell shocked I returned home, put on some period drama and caught up on my emails from the of wool and fabric. Marathon girl?! Is it too late to change my mind? I think I'd rather be Knitting Woman!

M - 470

Brighton Half - 27
Liverpool Half - 139

Glasgow Half - 251

Total Distance covered   456.9 miles

Where the magic happens...

... is only a (albeit lycra clad) leap of faith away!

Catching sight of myself if a full length mirror recently I was quite horrified by how bad my posture is, in particular around my core. I stand with my pelvis tilted forward and stomach hanging out, not a good look on anyone, and certainly not on a wannabe marathon runner!

Actually I've known this about myself for a long time and way before it was encapsulated on video by the Running Man I consulted back in July. However when I heard "feet turned out, possibly collapsed in, pelvis dumped, head pushed forward" on the podcast* I've been listening to, I realised it could have been me they were talking about!  On the plus side it means I'm not alone, on the downside it was in reference to why so many runners end up with injuries.

Taking this posture as the starting point, before you add speed or distance into the equation, it is not difficult to see why problems arise, but what came next was a bit of a wake up call.... one step with my body this far out of alignment is going to put stresses on bits that are compensating for the bits which aren't working properly (he was a bit more technical about it), at fifteen hundred steps per kilometre (on average) and forty kilometres in a marathon, that's sixty thousand repetitions out of kilter - I don't even want to contemplate the maths for the five hundred or so miles of training that I've still got to do before I even get there! It is almost enough to make me hang up my running shoes altogether to save further injury!

Add force into the equation and it's no wonder I keep getting injured! There was some sums and terms that all sounded a bit too much like gym terminology for my liking but I think the premise was that a five kilometre run is like doing a million one kilo calf raises in one session! I'm hoping that the Biomechanics Man is going to go easier on me tomorrow!

I am apprehensive about my début in the gym. It is way out of my comfort zone, but as I saw recently on Facebook (so it must be true) that is where the magic happens...

M - 471

Brighton Half - 28
Liverpool Half - 140

Glasgow Half - 252

Total Distance covered   456.9 miles

* picture courtesy of my friend's friend - hope he doesn't mind me sharing!
* podcast for those of you who may be interested...
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/stop-chasing-pain/id381697894?mt=2&i=326163458