London Marathon 2012

I applied for a ballot place. 35,000 places, many many many people wanting to do it - getting in is harder than the race apparently! Not expecting to get a place, but thought I might as well apply anyway, you never know. Only thing is, if I somehow do manage to get a place, I'll actually have to run it. Hmm. Good job I don't actually have to think about it till October.

Visitors, Registration, and Morning FAIL!

A few bits and pieces of news for you, let's go with the good news first. 

First up, I've had visitors! Two other bloggers, Zaneta and Tricia stopped by yesterday and left comments. I'm officially not talking to myself, yay! They also said nice encouraging things, and I definitely need the motivation at the moment, so that made me feel better. It's also really good to have comments because I don't really have anyone around that runs, so it's a bit of a replacement for running buddies. 

Another piece of good news is that I've finally managed to register for the race, huzzah! No watching for the sidelines for me, no no no. Probably watching people cruise past me still, but at least I'll hopefully be moving in the same direction. One nice touch is that they put your name on your bib - I don't know if it'll be big enough for people to see, but being alone, it'll be nice if someone screams my name to spur me on. Only 64 days to go!

Of course, if there's good news, there has to be bad news to balance it out (boo world!!). To counter out the nice things, I've had a bit of a running fail. Actually, quite a muscle-screaming, knees-complaining, wheels-off fail. My long run was scheduled for last night, but I was so ridiculously exhausted yesterday that I decided my body was telling me to lie on the couch all night. It was quite nice, watched a bit of a geeky documentary and a bit of cycling, and got to bed fairly early. Good plan so far. Didn't last long though. To make up for being pathetic, I dragged myself out of bed at 6.30 this morning, intending to do another speed session. I figured I'd have an easy warm up to get the legs going, then knock out a few reps. Not to plan. It was hideous from about step 15 (and only then because I saw a colleague before then, so made an effort to look spritely. Doubt it worked.). The wheels never got on, let alone having the chance to come off. I forced myself around for just under 4 km at a grandmother shuffle-pace, got pointed and laughed at by all the construction workers and drinks vendors, sweated everywhere and eventually crawled home feeling like crap. FAIL!

Evidence of my patheticness. Hmph. 

Minor set-back

I know it's a bit big, wasn't on purpose!

So, it turns out my payment for the half didn't go through. Not a very good start to a race! I'm quite confused - there was no message saying it hadn't worked. Just a little apprehensive as they use some random third party company to take the money, don't want to be giving my details out to all and sundry! I've seen someone say that registration doesn't work on Chrome, which is the browser I use at home, so I'll have to skive a few minutes at work tomorrow to register. What a shame...

Anyway, a little late, but here's times and totals for last week.

Tuesday: 5.69km, 33:19 Continuous running, managed a kick at the end

Thursday: 11.03km, 69:43 Longest run in at least a year, whoo! Thought my knees were going to crumble at the end though.

Sunday: 4.7km, 28:46, failed to get up and go running in the morning, so settled for an interval session. 1.5k warm up, 4x400(ish) intervals at about 4:50/km. Thought I was going to be sick after the last one, but managed to shuffle on for another kilometre or so.

Finally, congratulations to everyone at London and Boston, especially Joan Benoit-Samuelson, who ran just over 2hrs 50 at Boston. For a 53 year old to be running just shy of Olympic trials time is truly inspiring, I hope I'm managing even a fraction of that when I'm her age!

Boo to the BBC!

I'm very very disappointed in the BBC. Booooo!

It's the London Marathon today, and I would very much like to watch it on the telly/internet/listen to commentary/get updates by carrier pigeon. As I'm outside the UK, I can't watch it on the telly (iplayer also won't work), but the BBC website has been saying for weeks that it will have video streaming of all three races. So about 15 minute before the start of the women's race, I settled down in front of my laptop for an afternoon of good running, only for the videos never to appear. It appears they failed to mention that the videos are for the UK only, which I thought would be a fairly important point to mention on a website people read all over the world. So, I'm left with their text updates, which are disappointing to say the least. The carrier pigeon option would be more informative I feel! Over the first 90 minutes of the women's race there have been TWO updates about the race. No mention of the Brits in the race, or anything except the leader is going pretty quick. And nothing about the men's either. Thanks guys.

Madness, or Genius?

I seem to have signed up for the Kuala Lumpur Half Marathon at the end of June. Eek!! Quite possibly a bit silly of me, seeing as I only have 12 weeks to get from slow 10k plods (although 6.5k is the furthest I can go and still be comfortable really) to a quick 21k! Not sure how I'll get there, but I'll give it a go. I've got a training schedule off the Nike+ thingy, but I'm very good at ignoring those and doing whatever I want instead (i.e.a lot less!), so it might not be that useful. So quite possibly a moment of madness.

However, I asked around on the Runner's World forum, and people seem to think that 12 weeks is ample time for my metamorphosis into racer-extraordinaire. I like races, they give me something to train for, which is definitely needed around here. The extra motivation will really help me to get out and do the same circuit again and again. The magic seems to be working already - I hauled myself out of bed at 6.30 this morning to run because I can't go tonight. Unheard of. Maybe a moment of genius?

Here's a map of the course.

It's only one lap, which is nice, but I'm a little worried I might get lost! The marathon will be on at the same time, and the route is similar, but not exactly the same. Hope I don't accidentally stumble down a road that will take me out for another 10k! I managed to find a hostel about 500m from the start/finish though, so at least I won't have far to drag myself at the end!

I think I'm leaning toward genius at the moment, hope it stays that way.

Totals for the week:

Tuesday: 5.01k, 30:44 continuous running

Thursday: 10.12k, 65:46

Stupid o'clock Sunday morning: 6.53k, 41:19

Whole week: 21.75k

A good week for running

After getting to green last week, I've been a bit more motivated to push myself a little harder (although, to be honest, not much harder!) in my last few runs. Well, the last two runs, the one before that was horrendous, pathetic pathetic pathetic, and my head phones broke.

Anyway, back to the aren't-I-great bit. I went out on Tuesday (with the boyfriend's headphones) with the intention of getting to 5k without stopping, but not really thinking I would do it. It's ridiculously hot now, and I'm feeling a bit lazy. At the start it was fairly grim, especially the bit where I have to go up and down some stairs to get around a blocked-off car park (no idea why it's blocked off though, you can access it the other way, it's not keeping anyone out of anywhere, and serves no purpose I can see except inconveniencing me!), but I managed to keep going through being tired and a horrible stitch to finish at 5.1km, average pace 6:01/k, and it was ALL running. Whoo! So we celebrated with Domino's 2 for 1 pizza, not the healthiest of choices...

Today was even better - I've been reading John Galloway's ideas about run/walking, and decided to try shorter run bits with shorter breaks between them, ending up with around 4 minutes 30 running followed by about a minute walking. My legs felt like lead, my knees were screaming (but I think mostly from wearing my work sandals too many days in a row) and it was even hotter than Tuesday, but there was still a bit of enjoyment there. And I didn't get angry at all the people on motorbikes trying to kill me. Except one, but he was running a red light, so he deserved it. It was a bit of a plod, but I got back eventually at 10.12k in 65:42. Oh, and I have new headphones. Cheap £2 'Sony' ones from a backpacker shop in town, sound a bit weird, but they'll do.

I'm really rather chuffed with myself, as it's the first time I've managed either of these workouts since before I started running again in January, and the first time in about a year if treadmills aren't counted (and I think they're cheating a bit, so no, they don't count). I'm going to reward myself by watching sci-fi and trying not to get too used to all the milestones!

GREEN!

I made it to 250km and the green level on Nike+, yay! The best part is now the Nike+ website isn't all disgustingly orange coloured, which was pretty ugly. I'd show you a picture, but I can't figure out where the print screen button is on the boyfriend's computer. Silly Macs!

Had a pretty good week running-wise. On Tuesday I had a very relaxed, no checking time/pace run where I comfortably managed just over 4.5k running continuously, with a super fast last 500m. Thursday was quite nice, but tonight's run was HOT, and my headphones broke in the middle of it. Hmph.

Totals for this week:

Tuesday - 4.68k, 5:83/k continuous running

Thursday - 6.56k, 6:18/k

Sunday - 5.67k, 6:09/k

Off to call the Japanese restaurant to see where the dinner I ordered a while ago is. I want my edamame!