New Clothes!

Well it's been a terrible week for training and everywhere I look there seems to be reminders of how much work I've got to do. Last Sunday was Nottingham's Robin Hood marathon. Today was the Great North Run. Whenever I drive around the city or to work I see smug looking goody-two shoes runners casually sprinting up hills barely breaking a sweat. Advertisements for running kit seem to laugh at me from large bilboards. Or maybe I'm just feeling a bit guilty about my lack of effort this week.
This week's shameful schedule:

Sunday- 7.5K (the furthest I've ever run)
Monday- looking after my daughter in the day and then a night shift
Tuesday- sleep and another night shift
Wednesday- recover from night shift and a walk only
Thursday- work in the day, complete lack of motivation when I got home at 7pm
Friday- looking after Katherine, took her swimming- not sure splashing around with her counts as training, stayed at a friend's in the evening so no training then either
Saturday- Deep water aqua (weird but fun- 2m deep pool, flotation band strapped around your middle and lots of resistance exercise and jogging/ jacks/ kicks)

So that's one run and a deep water aqua session. And a lot of food including dinner at a friend's, a chocolate pudding, and cookies on the night shifts. And a few biscuits. And some salt and vinegar hula hoops (without doubt the best hula hoop flavour) And takeaway pizza on nights. Oh dear. Hardly the diet of a marathon runner.

But in some ways, this is good. This is my life- I'm a busy, working Mum who has lots of commitments to church and her friends and quite likes her food. Fitting training in is going to be tough some weeks and I'm bound to have weeks where the diet goes out of the window. Next week I'm doing two "Long Days" at work on Monday and Tuesday which means leaving home at 7am and not getting home until 9pm earliest. Two more days completely written off. But after that, the week is pretty clear.

My left foot hurt quite a bit after Sunday's 7.5K and I think it was the start of a bit of plantar fasciitis so actually having a week off running probably isn't a bad idea. It seems to be fine again now though so no excuses! Wednesday will definitely feature a run. Absolutely. Promise. Unless it's raining.....

I'm meant to be blogging about kit. I have no idea about what sort of stuff I need for running long distances and there is so much on the market (most of which seems entirely unnecessary). However, being a sucker for new, shiny things I scampered off to Decathlon (other sports shops are available!) in search of some motivation-inducing stuff. I returned with: new running leggings (with a cool, shiny strip thingy that might stop me getting run over at night); a fairly luminous pink vest affair (could also double for fancy dress at 80's party); a long sleeved running top for if it's cold and a running water bottle. Cool! At least I look the part now. 

The water bottle is truly useless. It's got a little flip spout and the hole that the water comes through is miniscule meaning you give an almighty slurp and get a tiny 2ml of water. Now, when I'm running, I huff and puff like some sort of overweight bear having a ITU admission-worthy asthma attack and a tiny 2ml just isn't enough. Back to the drawing board on the water while training front.

I'm thinking that at some point I'll need some new trainers but am going to save this for when I need a serious motivation boost. Nothing like an urge to run than in new, shiny trainers! Lots of larger sports shops and specialist running shops do gait analysis and then try to flog you expensive running shoes designed to specifically work with your running style. At the moment I feel like I'm so unfit that I could possibly run on the treadmill in the shop in case they laughed at me. Sometimes the marathon seems such a long way out of my reach.


Next time: more about Mark Versey- the reason for this marathon madness.