The past few weeks...

... The past few weeks seem to have flown by.

Its now just 9 weeks to the Marathon!

 After hurting my knee and walking like a pirate for a few days I laid off the training for a week or so, gradually starting back up with a 4 mile jog then a 10 mile run the weekend before last.  By this weekend just gone it was feeling much better so I decided to try another 16 mile run in Sheffield.  Its really started to hurt again but not as bad as it did before, I think this time, as I felt it coming on I started to walk and stretch it out, this worked quite well and every few miles I'd walk for a couple of hundred meters and stretch it out, still needed to ice it when I got home though, I think this is definitely one for the physio.

In light of this I think I'm not quite recovering from my longer runs over the period of a week so I'm altering my training plan to only do one really long run per fornight, I'll alternate that with maybe 9/10 miles on the other Sundays as thats quite an easy distance now.
It is annoying though, now that I've finally reached the state of fitness that I dont feel out of breath and my muscles dont really ache my crumbly joints start letting me down, theres not much you can do, I don't think, to improve them...

Anyway my big shocker of the week is that I've bought a bum bag, an actual BUM BAG or fanny pack if you like, never thought I'd ever go into a shop with the sole intention of buying one of those, but seriously where else can I put my brick of a phone and my wine gums?

One Year on

Not posted for a while as I've been up in Scotland on holiday.  I had planned for it to be a training holiday and to get lots of runs in but the first night there in the cottage with Pauls family I managed to fall down the stairs and turn my arse the deepest shade of purple.  As you can imagine that hurt quite a lot, so I had a few days of not doing to much moving never mind running!
On the Thursday though I'd had enough and went out for what I'd planned to be a mid length run, aiming for around 10 miles.  The roads on Mull where we were staying are amazing, single track with passing places, stunning scenery and plenty of hills and oh so quiet, PERFECT, that is until you come upon a massive scary Bull standing by the side of the road.  I stopped and pondered going round it for a while but when it put its head down and grunted (it had quite a few calves around it that its was probably being a touch protective of) I turned around the other way and literall legged it, I was absolutely crapping myself!

Here is the beast, its blurry because I was already walking away! (looked much scarier in real life though...)

 I got in a couple more mini runs just down the track from the cottage which were lovely, down by the sea loch, but in the end didnt get anywhere near as much done as I'd wanted to.

The second week of our trip saw the 1 year anniversary of our day spent out in Durness with the whale rescue team and me and Paul hopped over on the ferry to the mainland to explore the peninsula of Ardnamurchin (that was after one lovely last night at my favourite resteraunt and beach where Paul proposed to me!)
We spent the next week exploring the area and as we were staying in the van with no shower I didnt do any training at all (unless larking about in a kyak counts?)

All in all we had a brilliant trip, didn't see any whales this time, but we did catch sight of some bottlenose dolphins leaping and loads of seals chillin on the beach.

The day after we got home I went for a propper run and covered 16 miles but now my knee has flared up and feels like the joint has been replaced by a bag of broken glass so I'll have to see how it goes this weekend.  Cant believe its only 12 weeks until the marathon... terrifying!

Also I just finished a new piece for the BDMLR T shirt design range this morning, not shown them yet, but what do you think?