A year to forget

I’ve been away for a while.

I didn’t complete a 100km run. I had more important things to worry about and my training became non existent.

The reasons are two fold. I went through an enforced career change. I worked for my best friend of 25 years and he was best man at my wedding  and I was technically let go. For lots of different reasons that some people may know and others will never know. I quickly found other employment and had to try to adjust to the pace of this new job and it was hard to begin with.

A few months later and blow number 2 My lovely bride of all of nine months says we should end our marriage and no she doesn’t want to work at it.

Although one event may not have directly caused the other lets just say that it definitely had an impact.

That happened in June. I admit I may have wallowed in a bit of self pity for a while but luckily not for long.

I got back to what I’m good at (technically) running away from my problems. Or at least taking better care of my health both physically and mentally.

I’m still grossly overweight and I do eat too much but I am a lot fitter than I was.

In September (actually the date of my 1s wedding anniversary) I ran the equinox 24hour race with a team of Stopsley Striders. It was a very hilly off road 10k course. I managed every one of my 3 laps in less than 70 minutes (per lap of course) including 1 night lap.

Since then I’ve managed a 29.23 minute park run and I trained myself up for the Luton half marathon and completed it in 2 hours 9 minutes and 9 seconds which was over 5 minutes quicker than the time I was hoping to beat. My friend Ashley did the race with me and beat his best time for the distance by a significant margin.

 

 

My goals for the near future are to beat my park run time of 28.38. If I can do that it will be the fastest I’ve ran a park run since july 2016. Which would be amazing. Running anything quicker than my last park run would be the fastest I’ve run in 2017 so fingers crossed I’ll do it this weekend.

I also hope to compete in the Bedford half marathon in December and improve on my half marathon time. I have entered the Wolverton 5 Mile race and I should easily get a sub 50 minute run. If I can get anywhere near 48 minutes I will be well pleased.

In a fit of complete lunacy I booked a solo place at the spitfire scramble so the 100km challenge is back on. I think I am going to have to run another marathon this year and a lot of extra training. At the moment I am still in the build up phase. I’ve managed to put in almost 25 miles of running some weeks so hopefully I can get that up and calm down on the snacking and get my weight down once again.

I’m hoping that I will stealthily become an athlete like last time. When I really trained I never even realised how good I was till I started putting on weight and training less.

As a last thing I would like to thank all my friends for their encouragement and support. Without you I might be in a much darker place (not that it isn’t always easy). Also thank you to at least 2 of my blog readers who encouraged me to fire up the keyboard once again.

 

Spoiler alert :New year new me bulls**t

Well not really a new year new me exactly.

I am going to set myself some goals. Hopefully realistic ones.

I’ve been very quiet for a few weeks.

I had injured my knee running along the busway so I couldn’t run for almost 4 weeks. The rot set in and the binge eating took it’s toll.

I am now the proud owner of a food baby. I feel awful. My running has greatly suffered as a result and i have started to get a bad lower back and my knee seems to always hurt because of the extra load I’m carrying.

After dropping below 17 stone I have put it back on and more. I have a tub of Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer, a really nice flavour, cookie swich i thinks it’s called. I have decided that if my wife doesn’t eat it first I will save it as a present for myself for when I get back under 17st.

I have actually managed some running over the festive period. A jog walk to park run, Park run and back Christmas eve. A jog walk on the bank holiday Monday for around 3.5 miles. Then a double park run new years day (thanks liz and Stew) and track last night plus a jog/walk home yesterday from work. All were pretty much personal worsts.

As far as reasonable goals go. I am setting myself a few targets that should be achievable.

1. Get to my 25th Park run by the end of the year.
2. Get a 5km time of under 25 minutes.
3. Run the Mk marathon
4. Run a sub 2 hour half marathon again for the first time since St.Albans half 2015.(18 months).
5. Blog more consistently lol

I am not sure if the 100km in 24 hours is still really attainable. I don’t want to over commit and injure myself. If that’s not the case there is always a fallback of the St.Albans stampede in Septmeber which is a 12 hour race. It would allow me an extra 2 months to get myself fitter, but would be an insanely hard target to do 100km in 12 hours. Out of I think 57 soloists who ran only 3 managed the 16 laps needed to complete 100km. watch this space.

I will have to make a decision soon. Loads to aim for and not a lot of time to do it in.

Happy new Year everyone

The challenge begins

So after deciding to run the spitfire scramble solo this year and that I would blog it i thought I would see where I am at the beginning of the challenge.

I stepped on the scales this morning just before my breakfast and this is what i saw. 17 stone 1 pound.(or 108.6kg). So considering in April 2015 I had gotten below 90kg (14st 10lb) I was pretty disappointed. An increas of nearly 19kg ( or over 2.5 stone).

I am not one into body shaming or weight obsession but unless i took up strongman in the last year or so and no one told me. Putting over 2 stone is a bit much.

This isn’t surprising as my 5k times have dwindled from a pb of 23.03 to around 27 minutes on the local park run. I also have gone from a Large to nearly a 2xl shirt and from a 34-36 to a 38-40 inch waist.

I’m hoping that increasing my running/exercise and cutting out snacks will be cheaper than buying a whole new wardrobe.

To aid this I finally dragged my kettlebells from my parents shed to the flat. And luckily a friend nominated me for the 22 press-ups for 22 days challenge so it’s motivated me to get my core strength back to where it was. So 22+ press ups a day followed by 25 sit ups, kettlebell workout and then a plank for as long as i can hold it. 2.5 mins and increasing (used to do 5mins+ with 10kg weight vest)

I was disappointed not to go to track last night but after another celebratory night on Saturday and rubbish sleep 3 nights in a row I felt too run down. Last thing i need is to catch a cold and get behind in my training from the get go.

So the plan this week is, run home from work tonight (1.5m). Run home from work Thursday. Help with the beginners speed work. Friday will be rest/cross train, Saturday should be park run with run to and from park (6m total) then sunday I will do my first LSR since May 10m in as long as it takes.

Hopefully I will blog by or before monday