Any other Norfolk runners out there?

I'm always thrilled to realise that somebody actually reads these ramblings of mine from time-to-time, and better still if they prove to be folk I have a fighting chance of meeting some day because they live in the same county!

An email from Nicki this morning prompted me to wonder if there was any (forgive the pun) mileage in setting up an online resource for local runners to be able to find each other when they need motivation - somebody to run with. So, for any readers in Norfolk (that's UK), have a look at my newly-created Yahoo group - join us if you'd like - and perhaps I'll see you there!

Shutting the stable door

... after the Rector's Wife has bolted.

Wise words from Vanilla, but it's too late for me - I'm already hooked.

And desperate for my next fix.

Red wine is good for you, right?

Tagged

I love the serendipity element of blogging, and whilst I'm not much of a chain-letter fan, I really like this as an exercise.

I was tagged by Sam at Running and Thinking.

The rules are:

• link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog
• share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird
• tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs
• let them know they are TAGGED by leaving a comment on their blog.

My five things are:

• I love organising things - and will sometimes let stuff get in a mess so's I can enjoy tidying it up (how sad is that??)
• Although I'm tidy, I am a complete slut when it comes to cleaning and dusting
• I love singing - especially when it's an over-the-top bit of modern musical theatre that tells a story and has a big finish
• I am incredibly efficient when I have loads to do, and woefully inadequate when life is quieter
  
• I have absolutely no sense of direction
  

I tag (and hope they don't mind):

• Crabby McSlacker at Cranky Fitness (absolutely the most entertaining and thought-provoking writer I've come across in the blogging world)
• Jennette, aka Pasta Queen, at Half of me (the most jaw-dropping weightloss achievement coupled with exquisite journalism and technological supremacy. Honestly, you can go off people)
• Nikki at Nikki's Adventures in Life and Running (we've met at a couple of Norfolk races - and she is loads faster than me!)
• Lorna at Lorna's Thunks (beautiful artwork, amazing photographer, first-rate writer)
• TK at Rough Road Studio (another superb artist and observer of life)

Check them out and enjoy.

No such word as can't

This has nothing to do with running, but everything to do with overcoming limitations. I reckon it belongs here. Especially given how I'm feeling right now about the fact that my ankle still is too painful to run on - after two weeks - and how depressed it makes me. So meantime, until I can run again, I'd better find another trumpet to blow.

Crabby does it again

OK, so her post was actually a month ago, but hey.

You know my favourite mantra, which originated from one of Crabby's readers: "half-assed is good enough"? (I think I need it made up into a logo to wear to the gym on a t-shirt.)

This entry sums it up again wonderfully. How many of us have had this conversation with ourselves? (but without a conscience as smart as Crabby's...)

Another new target...

...the ten minute mile!

Any real runners out there will probably fall about laughing. But having sorted out my genuine distances and times, using the Fetch Everyone website, I realise that plodding takes on a new meaning: none of my runs, training or races, has (until tonight) gone under an 11 minute mile.

Actually, when I review my progress, improvement is better than I realise. When I did my Race for Life in May, the pace clocked at 12:32. During June & July, my comments about "a circuit of the lake timed between 4:30 and 4:45" and "down to the Hall and back, less than 10 minutes each way" reflect a pace of around 11:30. And my performance in the August Wroxham 5K was a pace of 11:06.

Tonight I thought, let's go for it. I timed my run to Morton Hall and back accurately: the 1.75 mile run (no, not two miles as I used to think!) took 19:03. That paces at 10:53. But oh, boy - was that ever an effort.

So that's the new target. A ten minute mile (which is a speed regarded as "run easy" by the experienced folks) which doesn't leave me a beetroot-faced wreck...

A brilliant new discovery

Courtesy of my friends at Runner's World, I've come across the superb Fetch Everyone. Not just another blogging-sharing-forum gossip site, it also gives you the ability to log your training very easily - and to map the runs you do, very precisely for distance.

Actually, that last bit has been something of a two-edged sword. I knew that my regular here-to-Morton-Hall run was "just under a mile", but I'm a bit fed up to realise that it's actually nearer 0.875 of a mile - i.e. it's a 1.75 mile round trip, not "nearly two miles". And the Lenwade circuit - round the fishing lakes (which I haven't done for a while) - isn't "about half a mile round the lake", but 0.43 miles. Multiply that by the 4, 5 or 6 circuits I was doing, and it's a bit less impressive than I thought! Oh, well.

But the folks on FE have been really welcoming, with some immediate friendly emails and comments on my achievement so far. Does me worlds of good. Thanks, guys.

I'm back

Well, that was a long break from blogging. For anybody who's been loyal / daft enough to keep up with my reports, apologies for the absence... it was made up of (a) two weeks' holiday in a gite in the Loire valley, (b) a week seeing a variety of friends around the London area, and (c) immediately vanishing to do three days' decluttering work with a new client in Suffolk.

So here I am, nearly a month after my Wroxham 5K efforts, catching up. I've added a few interim entries on their correct dates, where there's any relevant news on running / weight loss activity in that time, so if you're really interested you can start reading those here and then work through each Newer Post.

Oh, and thanks to the guys on the Runner's World forum for caring about what I'm up to and sending me an email to chase me up after a month's absence!

PS: Kim has been on holiday, too - she went to Spain just before we got back from France. We're looking forward to meeting up for a run on Monday. I've really missed my friend and mentor.

More about age

It's all Crabby McSlacker's fault. She wrote one of her excellent blogs a few days ago which included a link to an extraordinary parlour game: guess how old I am?!

Now, Crabby accuses some of the participants of fishing for compliments, and I have to hold up my hands and admit to being one of those. I've generally been told that I'm not bad for my age, and since the recent weight loss, have had some gratifyingly pleasing comments along the lines of you're HOW old? Never... (I've also had somebody look at my before-and-after photos on the right hand side of this blog, and ask in all seriousness if the earlier photo is of my mother.)

This being the case, I couldn't resist joining in with this slightly daft - not to say narcissistic - idea. And no, I'm not going to tell you the results - you'll just have to go and have a look for yourself. Scroll down to the foot of the page to see the present average guess, and follow the link to have a go. And upload your own photo if you're feeling brave.

I'm gonna live forever

Anybody else remember Fame? - I was studying drama & theatre studies at college when it came out...

groovybabe pointed me towards the Death Clock (I kid you not). As I'm non-smoking, optimistic and with a BMI in the lowest bracket - if only just (less than 25 - yay!), the site estimates my date of death as 13th May, 2066. That will make me 103 years old.

Fine. But if at that point I can't still run, sing, cook, laugh, read and do rude things to my husband, I'm not sure I want to be here that long. What about you?...

Amen to this

Thanks to soap box girl for pointing me towards this excellent clip.

Inspiration - weight loss and technology

The blogging community, and all the links between us, are a great source of support, inspiration and fun. Today I've come across the supremely impressive Half of Me : Jennette "needed to lose half my body weight. Okay, I actually needed to lose even more than that, but Four Sevenths of Me just didn't have the same ring to it."

She succeeded in halving her body weight (from 372 lb - that's 26 stone 8 lb, to us Brits) to 186 lb, which she did between November 2004 and February 2007 - just over two years. Since then, she's gone on to reach 176 lb (as of yesterday's date), and seems to be presently losing weight at the rate of about 2 lb a month (which is roughly my own rate at the moment). At 5'9" tall, her goal is 160 lb.

Not only that, but the woman's a technical genius. She's managed to create 3D images of herself at various stages on her journey - "you can check out my fat ass from 8 different directions. Just click and drag on the image of me below to spin me right round, like a record, baby." Better still, she generously shares the technique on her site with the rest of us. Whether I'll have a go at creating a 3D of myself remains to be seen!

You go, girl. You're an inspiration to all of us who are trying to be the best we can be.

Three months' worth of distance run

Yesterday I mentioned this idea of incremental running, and I've just worked out what I've run so far. I've looked back at my records (I'm a sad soul, it's all captured in Excel spreadsheets...) and see that since my very first run - 24th March - I've run approximately 72 miles (if my assessment of the distance of each run is correct). That's about 14 weeks' running, so I'm doing an average of just over 5 miles each week - for a beginner, not bad.

72 miles also happens to be pretty much exactly the distance from my home in Norfolk down to the city of Cambridge. So I've just about arrived in time to get a Chelsea bun from Fitzbillies...

My next target, therefore, is to continue down the A11 to reach my parents' home in Walthamstow - a total of 112 miles from my home. I'll let you know when I get there!!

Incremental running

Whilst in Norwich today (for the haircut) I bought a copy of Runner's World to see if I might subscribe to it - I've already found its online forum very useful and supportive. On a brief glance through it over a sandwich in Pret a Manger, I like what I see: for example, I love the article about Steve Oxley's technique of incremental running. You tot up the miles you've run across a given period, and figure out how far it would add up to on a map.

Steve 'reached' Central London [from Hull] in June... "I had just run down the Mall, touched Nelson's Column and was now heading back north..."

What a great idea. And, as he says, it sounds more impressive than "I've been for a three mile run"!

I wonder how far I've run since March? I'll have to work it out and let you know...

And Crabby talks a lot of sense, too...

A great article by Crabby McSlacker (who I found a few posts back, and whose superb attitude to real life I much enjoy) about Getting Off the Couch. Not only that, but the comments by her readers about "half-assed is good enough" (i.e.: any effort, no matter how small, is an improvement over nothing) are so, so relevant to Miss Completer-Finisher (as I was hard-wired at birth).

Runners talk good sense

The more I find blogs, articles, forums and the like about running, the more I like the running community. They are honest. They might procrastinate as much as the next man or woman (actually, probably more so), but at least they're up-front about it, rather than hiding it like a chocolate-bar-wrapper in the desk drawer. We can all keep moving the goal-posts - what is an excellent achievement to me (5K in 39 minutes without stopping, walking or keeling over) is small beer to the runner who is trying to get her PB down to 5K in under 18 minutes (what?!) - but that means that we can appreciate our own achievements, rather than feeling overawed by how far ahead the front-runners (forgive the pun) are.

I've browsed my way to Complete Running, and the most recent article (at the time of writing) speaks to me so clearly. Jank's article on Motivation is glorious.

He quotes Cory Doctorow (where do they get these names?!):

"Garbagemen never talk about having garbagemen’s block. Doctors never say, “I can’t do surgery today, I’m just not in the mood.” If it’s your job you have to be able to write when it’s time to write."

Running is like that - if you wait for the perfect weather, or have to have a complete and total set of gear absolutely every time you head out the door, you’re not going to make it.

The very first time I ran with Kim, we were actually booked for a PT session in the nice, warm, protected gym. She phoned me beforehand, said "we're going for a run. Bring something warm to wear." (This was in March.) We did it. It was fine - more than fine, actually - the first steps on a very important journey. And we did it on a cold, blustery, damp March day. So when I ran my two miles today - warm, sunny June, with skylarks overhead - so much the better.

It puts me in mind of when we came to Norfolk for the interview for these parishes. Late November, and a frankly disgusting day. We still loved the place, and still took the job when it was offered to him. We then came back just before Christmas; then again in early February; in early March; and we finally moved in on (naturally) April 1st. Each of those three return visits was in weather as awful as the first time - in fact, the March visit was made in thick snow.

When we moved into the Rectory in April, it was a glorious day, and we knew we'd made the right decision. But then, we'd known that all along. Because we didn't wait for the right conditions; it was the right place. And that's where I am now. Work, tense hamstrings, busy, bored, happy, depressed - none of them make any difference. What makes the difference is that I know that I can make my own difference.

New web resource

I have discovered an excellent new forum for mutual support, encouragement and the occasional bit of gentle bullying. Just what I need. The Runner's World UK website cropped up when I was Googling for another 5K to train for (more of that in a moment), and the friendly banter that goes on in their forums - not to mention sensible advice - is well worthwhile. The lists of races, searchable by distance, county and all manner of other criteria, are very helpful. Check it out.

Oh, and the 5K? I don't feel a 10K is realistic yet (which is the distance for the next set of Cancer Research events - hopefully I'll be ready for that in a few months' time), but I need another target for the near future. It turns out that the Wroxham 5K series, courtesy of the Norwich Road Runners, is just what I need. One (of the series of three) has already happened, the second is coming up in a few days' time, but the third is on 22nd August, just before our holiday. It's a race rather than a fun-run, but apparently regarded as beginner-friendly, and there are no scary limitations - like getting through the first half of the race in ten minutes flat (!).

So my aim for this race is to (obviously) run the whole thing; maintain a ten-minute-mile as far as possible; and therefore to finish in something under 34 minutes - preferably 32 or 33. I've got two months to do it - I reckon this is possible. Watch this space.

Blog blog

This blogging lark is quite a revelation at times. Having discovered the "next blog" link at the top of this site, I've occasionally gone down the serendipity route to see what I could find purely at random. Most of it is complete rubbish, but occasionally a diamond finds it way through.

New discovery is Blogs By Women, and through there I've landed up at Cranky Fitness. I especially relish her Ten Commandments. At last: common sense and humour. You go, girl.

A new look (for blog, for me)

Hope you like the new design - I was getting a bit tired of the soft pinky colours, which were really not me at all! (Thanks to one of my favourite blogs, Lorna's Thunks, I twigged that you don't have to accept all the default settings - there's loads you can do to personalise your blog.) I found the fabulous little cartoon on the internet - before anybody thinks I've turned into Betty Boop, it's not meant to be taken terribly seriously... I couldn't find a cartoon I liked of somebody running or working out!

Oh, and while I'm at it, I've created a new blog. Starting this process at the age of 44, I enjoy noticing the achievements of folks who are older (or younger) than you'd expect for those activities; so Tolstoy's Bicycle (read the blog to understand the title!) has been set up to celebrate them - I hope you enjoy it. (Let me know if you have any contributions, too.)

I was dressed up to go out for an Evening of Divine Trinkets (I kid you not) in Norwich (run by my friend Claire Bunton), and had chosen that red top again (together with my favourite strawberry necklace & bracelet from East). I suppose I'm getting vain (am I forgiven after years of loathing the camera?), but the webcam photo I took - hey, cheekbones, welcome back! - pleased me so much that it's become my new profile photo. (I add it here too as the profile photo will probably change again before long...)