Strong is the new skinny...

Usually on a weekend morning you might find me reading the papers, having a coffee or sleeping in. 10 years ago on a Sunday morning at this time I would have just got in from a night out. This morning I was in the garden with Frank at 6am and yesterday I had run 11 miles by 10am! I hate admitting it but I think I'm almost a grown up now.....

So, 11 miles. I got up at 6.30, ate some scrambled egg on toast as we'd run out of porridge, drank some water, mopped the floor a few a more times after Frank and eventually got out of the door just in time to meet Adele, Sues & Carolyn at Darley Park.

The route was  - Darley, Allestree, Duffield, Milford, Makney, Little Eaton, Darley. There were a couple of good hills thrown in as well. I hate hills. Rob explained to me last night this was all to do with my threshold levels. Basically, I've not been running enough miles for long enough so whenever I have to exert extra effort i.e. a hill, my legs & the rest of my body have to slow down. That's the non scientific answer anyway.

Running with other people definitely made the time pass quicker, even though we weren't doing much talking. I felt fine until we got to the last bit through Little Eaton and then I had to rely on some motivation from Carolyn and Suse to get me up Ford Lane hill.

These were my splits:
Mile 1 10.30
Mile 2 10.26
Mile 3 9.56
Mile 4 10.10
Mile 5 10.12
Mile 6 10.06
Mile 7 9.58
Mile 8 10.01
Mile 9 10.16
Mile 10 11.07 *Ford Lane hill
Mile 11 10.37

Overall average pace was 10.17, total time 1.53 and the best bit, 1306 calories burnt.

When I finished running I walked (well in a fashion) down Broadway to get home. In 2 weeks time I have to run 2 more miles but 2 weeks ago I had only run 9 miles so I know I can do it. I think, being realistic, my target time of 2 hours is possibly not going to happen given that would mean me running at 9.07 pace for the full 13 miles. 2 hours 10 mins is more likely. Flino is going to run with me so I can be sure of running even splits - he's the human metronome.

This week coming is the last, possibly hardest so far, full week of training:

Monday 35 minutes at 9.45
Tuesday 2 x 4 miles at 9 min mile pace with 5 mins recovery
Thursday 5 x 3 mins at 8 min mile pace with 90 seconds walk recovery
Saturday 2 hour run

I've been finding inspiration recently from this blog. Strong is the new skinny. We all need healthy, positive role models, not famous for fifteen minutes fakers. Like my Gran used to say "It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice". 

The whole point of this run is to raise money for Rainbows. The hospice is the only one of its kind in the East Midlands, it offers valuable support for life limited children and their families. So for anyone that is reading this you can sponsor me here. I'm sure you'll agree it's a very worthy cause.

Nuts

I've not ran my 3 miles yet. I've been to Manchester today for a meeting & didn't fancy an early run on a Monday morning. I'm begining to regret it now, it wasn't raining when I woke up at 6.30am. It's throwing it down now. I suppose I could go to the gym and do 3 miles on the treadmill but it feels like cheating. I don't really enjoy running on a treadmill, it always seems to take such a long time and I get really hot. Running outside is usually a better experience. At least there are things to take your mind off the pain.

So I do I just man up, put my trainers on & go or should I wait for another hour? The BBC weather page says the rain should be dying away early evening so I think I'll wait a while.

In an attempt to feel less hungry I bought a small packet of mixed nuts today. I was horified to find out how many calories they contained. I know that they are meant to be full of protein so should keep you feeling full but hells teeth - 670 calories per 100g. There was 70g of them, so about 2 handfuls - so 469 calories. More than a Chunky KitKat. I still ate them though.

There's always articles, news reports, whole programmes, devoted to the rise of obesity in the UK. I think some of it must be down to people not understanding just how long it takes to burn calories. Maybe the information on the packaging could read something like this:

This pack of nuts contains 469 calories. You'll need to run 5 miles to burn them off. This could take anywhere between 25mins and 2 hours depending on your level of fitness.

I feel much better today than I did yesterday, the bath & early night must have helped. I'm 2 weeks into this now. In 8 weeks I'll have done the Great North Run. I'll be sitting in my house having actually run 13.1 miles. I want to feel like I've done the best preparation possible. Right, best get my trainers on then, rain or no rain!