Overview

Today I ran the inaugural BUPA London 10,000 road race. At 10km it's the furthest I've ever run and I'm pleased to announce I ran it all without stopping and came in two minutes under my target time of an hour and ten minutes. It was all quite enjoyable really, despite the torrential rain that soaked through all my clothes before I even got to the start line, and I'm definitely interested in doing a longer race later in the year.

I treated myself to a lovely hot bath and some dry socks when I got home and have been munching through various carb heavy snacks all afternoon to keep my strength up. What a great excuse to eat tortilla chips and chocolate!

I video blogged the whole thing, as is my wont:



I thought you might be interested to know what music accompanied me round the city streets - I really don't think I could have done it without the following top tunes:

1. Supervixen - Garbage
2. Wind It Up - Gwen Stefani
3. I'm A Slut - bis
4. Channels - Popular Workshop
5. Date With The Night - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6. Get Off - Dandy Warhols
7. Vorvolaka - Die So Fluid
8. Little Sister - Queens of the Stone Age
9. Hot Ride - The Prodigy
10. Alala - CSS
11. Alice Practice - Crystal Castles
12. Icky Thump - The White Stripes
13. It's Getting Boring By The Sea - Blood Red Shoes
14. Semi-Mental - Biffy Clyro
15. Sour Cherry - The Kills
16. Hysteria - Muse
17. My Love Is Pink - Sugababes
18. Vulcan - Snake River Conspiracy
19. Succexy - Metric
20. The Hand That Feeds - Nine Inch Nails


I wanted to wear my lovely war paint but it's water soluble, so I just had to be content with having mascara streaming down my (very smug) face instead. Pretty!



Thank you to everyone who sponsored me to do this, I raised over £300 in the end and couldn't have done it without Annie Mole, delboydare, Denrael, Kai Chan Vong, Kyle MacRae, Andrew, Hinchcliffe, Mum & Dad, Tez, kymmie, Sevitz, Shena & James, Lizzie, Jess McCabe, Matt Grounds, Lorraine Burlingham, Tess & Kev, Walid, Christine Greathead, Michael Lyons, Rob Drayton, James Whatley, Kate Burgess, Rachel Willis-Bartlett, Tom Bosworth, Ed, brooner, Julia and Gran. Thanks everyone!!!

If you've found me through this realbuzz blog please add my regular blog to your RSS readers or bookmark list. I won't be posting on here any more but I regularly update that one:

http://www.shemakeswar.com/blog

 

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It's come around so quickly and I'm getting quite excited now. I played a tiring gig last night so have been taking it relatively easy today, trying tor est my aching limbs and brain ready for the morning's exertions. Fingers crossed the rain stops for us - just an hour and a half of clear skies would do!

Good luck to everyone taking part and big thanks to my friends for being so generous - total sponsorship at the moment is £295.21 with an additional £69.16 coming from Gift Aid.

 

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Benji got neutered last Wednesday and we went to visit my family in Suffolk on Thursday so that all put paid to any training I had planned. Sunday was spent filming a very cool bloggers event and crashing with exhaustion the moment I got home but I dragged myself out for 40 minutes this afternoon and am feeling much better for it.

I foolishly didn't leave quite enough time between eating a pretty big lunch and setting off on my run and ended up having to walk for about 5 minutes halfway through to get rid of a stitch. I haven't stopped to walk during a run since I started in May 2007, so that's disappointing. Still, better to get these things out of the way before the big day, I suppose.

I'm going to have to fit at least two more runs in, should I make it three? I was thinking of aiming for 7.5 - 8km on Wednesday morning then another 30 or 40 minute run on Friday or Saturday with a rest day on Sunday. Or I could do 40 minutes on Friday and a faster 20 minutes on Saturday. Does anyone have advice?

 

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16 days to go and I'm finally feeling better. It's such a relief to finally be out and running again after 11 days of no training whatsoever, most spent coughing and spluttering and worrying about how on earth I was going to run 10K!

My new plan has me running four times next week and three the next, increasing times up to 50 minutes only and doing plenty of yoga on inbetween days to keep supple. I'd like to finish the race in an hour or so but will have to speed up a bit from my usual 1.5km per 10 minutes average to achieve that. My priority is running it all in one go, so as long as I do that I'll be happy.

Sponsorship is up to £120 now - hurrah! I'll be emailing everyone I've ever met in the next few days to try and get some more pennies in the pot, you can sponsor me on my Just Giving page here. Thanks for the support :)

 

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I'm back to full health - touch wood - and have my first run back planned for the morning.

Here's a little something to keep you entertained til I report back:

 

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...in the form of a nasty bout of tonsillitis and related awfulness that has struck me down and left me languishing in bed all weekend.  I was feeling a bit dodgy on Thursday and Friday then on Saturday morning I woke to blinding headaches, dizzy spells and hideously painful raw throat :(  It hasn't been the happiest of weekends but I am starting to feel a little bit better.

Having the puppy, of course, I've had to pull myself together three times a day to take him outside, so I didn't completely miss the glorious sunshine that visited London yesterday.  I couldn't enjoy it as much as I'd have liked but we had a couple of nice long walks in the park on the new extendable lead (which means I don't always have to run along with him) and spent an hour in a different local park this morning off the lead - for the first time!  It was great seeing him bound about free of the shackles of a lead yet perfectly safe in a fenced off area.  All my hard work this week teaching him the recall seems to be paying off; not only did he not run away the minute I let him off the lead but he came back every time I asked him to - once from quite far away!  I felt very proud.

So, lately this blog's been focused more on Benji's training than my own, but I hope to rectify that this week with at least two runs and another swim.  As far as the dog is concerned, this week I will be continuing with the recall and the 'leave it' commands and starting to teach him to heel.  If he could also learn to leave my knitting alone that will be a very welcome bonus.

 

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It's been chucking it down all morning so I haven't been able to get out running yet...I think I'll push it back to tomorrow morning and get some much-needed yoga in this evening instead.

SPONSORSHIP UPDATE: Thanks to my darling parents my total has leapt to £79.99 - since I only made the Just Giving page last weekend I'm quite surprised and very pleased about that. Thank you all!

 

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I've written enough about my training for a few days, except to add that a brisk sprint on the bike from home to Brixton and back this afternoon got the blood pumping! How's Benji getting on, I hear you cry!

Well, week two of puppy class was last night and once again he seemed to forget everything we've been working on together for the past six weeks within the first two minutes of being in that church hall with five other puppies. The trainers rely heavily on the use of treats - these can be very effective in teaching new things but a smart breed like the Schnauzer susses out the situation pretty quickly and I really don't think bribes are working for my dog.

Benji immediately knows that I have treats about my person, and because he knows how to sit, lie down, stand etc and will do it for me at home with no treats, it's almost as though he thinks "Why on earth is she making me do this again when we did it this morning - gimme that treat!" as he goes to snap my fingers off with impatience. I've found both sessions quite frustrating, especially yesterday's when he started jumping up at me to get the treats and the trainers came over to help me with his jumping up problem - very common they said. He doesn't have a jumping up problem normally, he just wanted those treats!

Today I started working on straightening him out again after puppy class craziness, and with the help of an extendable lead my friend JJ lent me we had a lovely run around the local park. The sun was in the sky, a light spring breeze was in the air and all was well with the world. Check him out!

 

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