On your Marks... Get Set...

Only 14 days to go until I reach the “GO!” phase of my challenge and get to run in my first race (The Great Winter Run to be held in Edinburgh), and it’s a disaster, it really is. We’ve moved on from the “Stricken! Injured!” thing I was going on about last time when I’d contracted the flu bug to a whole new series of training-hampering events. The first was that I went out for a very ill-advised run one Sunday night shortly after I was recovering from the flu virus thing. It was ill-advised for two reasons: the first being that it was completely dark when I went out and although I was wearing a high-viz vest, I could barely see where I was putting my feet when I ran out of streetlights. I ran through some very dodgy stuff (without putting too fine a point on it, it was some kind of excrement – either cow or horse, I’m not sure which, but being as neither is more appealing than the other as a substance to run through, it doesn’t really matter) and tripped over a number of sticks lying across the path in the process. Then, when I got back I developed a cough. And I mean A COUGH!!! It’s probably as a result of going out too soon after my illness and running when I am not fully recovered, but whatever the reason I’m having a hell of a time persuading it to leave now that I’ve acquired it and have thus been rendered unable to train at all. (14 days to go... panic, panic).

Of course, you are all saying, there’s nothing to worry about, and, concerned with my fitness as I am, you no doubt believe that I have had a very frugal Christmas, didn’t over-indulge too much and therefore am still in pretty good shape to run. As one fellow runner asked: “As your first event is in January does this mean Christmas will be a little less jolly for you this year, maybe not so many mince pies and brandies? I have done that before and surprisingly really enjoyed that Christmas as I had loads of energy and I could still eat bad stuff and have a few drinks here and there but just did not sit with Quality Street tin all afternoon.” And, of course, you would be absolutely...(pause to sweep away those tell-tale Quality Street wrappers) correct. Or not, as the case may be. No, it’s a disaster, it really is – I’ve completely over-indulged (as normal) and as a result, (and totally unsurprisingly) I now have no energy and cannot possibly justify eating any more bad stuff... Oh, well, go on then, just one more strawberry cream. One more isn’t going to make any difference, believe me.

So as a result of all of the above I am in pretty terrible shape to run my first race. I’m still going to do it. The time will be rubbish (I was never that bothered about times anyway). I am seriously worried about the course description with its allusions to the large hill that is required for runners to scale, but I will still do it. And if I haven’t got any faith in myself, not to worry – the organisers of the run haven’t either. The run is started on a “wave” system whereby runners in the white wave go first, the orange go second and the green wave go last. I’m not sure how many entrants there are but I’m in the green wave and I’ve got the feeling that I may be somewhere in the vicinity of the back of the green wave. I’m runner number 2044 (if anyone knows how many entrants there are in the Great Winter Run, I’d be delighted to hear confirmation that there are indeed only 2045 participants). Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. It would only really knock my confidence further to have all those other runners overtaking me. At least at the back there is only runner number 2045 to overtake me. Plus, I won’t get lost – a serious advantage when your sense of direction is as bad as mine. I’ll just be able to following the disappearing forms of all of the other entrants around the course.

The only real good news on the fundraising campaign front I can offer this time is that I have since I last wrote confirmed my entry into the Great Yorkshire Run. That’s three entries in the bag. I also tried (vainly) to confirm my entry into the Great North Run. Obviously, anyone who knows the Greats will know that this is the big one. It’s the longest one, but it’s probably also the most prestigious and the one which is going to be most difficult to gain entry into as a result. However, I happened to notice on the Great Run website that it was possible to enter as a priority entrant now and that to become a priority entrant, all you had to do was become a member. I don’t want to knock the Great Run team – they’re fantastic, they really are – however, I’m sorry to say that the website did definitely give the impression that it was possible to join as a new member. And it isn’t. Not if you’re just a riff-raff amateur like myself anyway. I tried, I really did. The website won’t let you do it. I even rang the helpline. It was Christmas eve and the person manning the helpline was in a very bad mood and as a result wasn’t really inclined to help. So the upshot of this is I do not have my entry into the Great North Run in the bag and will just have to take my chances when the ballot opens in early January. I do hope I get a place, I really do. Without placing too much emphasis on this, but I’m sure you will agree with me, my entire fundraising campaign relies on my place in that event.

Anyway, in the meantime, I am going to rest my battered lungs (probably indulge in some more Quality street – sorry) and do my best to get the training back on schedule at least a week before my first race, but even if I don’t manage it, I can assure you that I will do my very best not to disgrace myself (well, at least totally) in the Great Winter Run and I will finish it (even if I have to crawl across the line – a distinct possibility – indeed, if anyone could arrange to run in front of me with a Quality Street on a string for me to follow, this would go a great way towards providing added motivation. The strawberry cream is my favourite). Failing this, if you would like to support my fundraising attempts in other ways – i.e. if you are not available for strawberry-cream-dragging purposes on 10th January, you can sponsor me at http://www.justgiving.com/valderbyshire Myself, and the Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity, would be very grateful for your support.

Injured! Stricken!

Okay, it’s not that bad. But I thought I’d give it an Enid Blyton-esque type title just to inject a little drama into this blog. In actual fact, it’s less drama, and more a right tale of woe. It started when I went for my weekly swim training in Bakewell swimming pool and, whilst in the course of dodging the teenagers doing handstands in the very shallow, shallow end and the man with the hairy back doing backstroke and trying to complete my mile, I somehow managed to injure the muscle in my chest. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. How is it even possible to strain your chest muscle? I didn’t even feel it until I got out of the pool and suddenly realised that I had a feeling across my chest like I was having a heart attack. In fact, I might even have been having a heart attack, but it’s just too embarrassing to go to the doctors with this after I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen for the past few months how very healthy and how very fit I am to run the greats. Anyway, it went off after a bit, and I didn’t feel ill or anything, so it must be okay (right?)

Well my embarrassing chest muscle strain continued all week – striking me at the most inconvenient of moments (whilst out for a meal with my friend, whilst lifting the shopping bags, whilst exhaling during a telephone call – and this is bad considering I work in a call centre) so I decided to give the swimming a miss for a week or two until it went completely better. It’s no big deal, I told myself. After all, I’ve got until September to get this swimming thing right. (But perhaps I really should try and learn to swim properly, for I suspect it was my faulty breaststroke technique which has caused this injury in the first place, and not, as I may have implied, the hilarious antics of some teenagers or a hairy pensioner). And, I told myself, I am still maintaining my fitness – after all, I’m still running twice a week.

Then disaster really struck. My eldest son caught a flu-type virus. He was really miserable. Then I caught it. And I was really miserable too. My youngest son is now coming down with it. He’s pretty miserable as well. On the upside, my husband is yet to catch it. On the downside, the fact that my youngest son was crawling all over my husband when he returned from work tonight and wiping his snotty little nose all over my husband in the process probably means that it’s pretty inevitable that he is going to catch it. And you know what men are like. They don’t get colds, they get flu. And when it’s flu (and, oh God, it’s felt like it) they’ve got something worse. So when he does catch it, not only will I be nursing one miserable toddler, one miserable child and feeling sorry for myself, but I’ll also be nursing someone who’s somehow contracted yellow fever. Anyway, the upshot of all of us being stricken in this manner has meant that I haven’t done any training whatsoever.... I don’t know which is worse. The virus or the guilt. I mean the bug is bad, but the guilt is crippling. It truly is worthy of the italics I have placed in this paragraph to emphasise it. It’s only one week’s worth of training after all, but I feel like my muscles have wasted, my fitness has evaporated and I’m no longer capable of running up the road, never mind running all the greats. Plus there is the knowledge that in precisely 23 days’ time my first race takes place and this week the only preparation I have done for it is more Enid Blyton-esque lashings of lemsip and chocolate smothered toffee from Thorntons to make me feel better. It’s not good. It really isn’t.

So, sorry. I can only apologise. Next week, when I’m feeling better (and I’m already on the mend) I’m going to go and find a big hill to run up. This week, however, I have nothing to report.

And Going Darker Still...

Hurray! We've finally moved house and, most importantly of all (how did I live without Facebook???) we're back on-line. It was all a bit of a palava I have to say. Not just the move itself, which was without the shadow of a doubt, a nightmare, but getting back up and connected to t'internet (as they say up here). We used to be with Tesco, but after we moved out to the sticks we discovered that the telephone network out here seems to be working on the basis of some strange archaic system comprised mainly of paper cups and bits of string. A man from Tesco telephoned to explain that they were no longer able to provide us with internet access in the area in which we now lived because, he said, of the limitations on the exchange.

I use the word "explain" loosely. Indeed, this is perhaps the wrong word to use. The man in question was clearly not calling from their Customer Services Team. In fact, goodness knows where Tesco had been keeping him. He was clearly one of their boffins employed to administer their internet services and was definitely not used to dealing with/communicating with other human beings. His attempts at an explanation as to the reasons underlying their failure to provide an internet link at our address, I have to be honest, just baffled me more. Still, it was nice of him to call.

Next we tried Sky. They said, "Sure, we can do it, and you'll get to watch Sky Movies over Christmas too, and all for the price of our variety package at £17 per month." Brilliant. But... Then they followed this up with "Oh, hang on. We can't get network coverage there without renting it back from BT. That'll cost you another £17 a month." £34 then. Too expensive. Particularly given the expense of the move and the fact that we still have a house to sell in Sheffield. And, as my husband pointed out in a particularly skin-flinty moment, there's a perfectly good Sky dish on the side of the old house just waiting to be taken down and stuck on the side of our new one. All it needs is pointing in the general direction of the satellite. (I'm not sure about this myself, but he's good at this sort of stuff, so I'll just leave it to him. In fact, I'm not even going to think about it, even though I am, I admit, missing Cbeebies for the children's sake. There's only so many times you can sit through the Bob the Builder DVD which came free with The Daily Mail and not get sick of it.)

Anyway, all of this eventually led us to plus.com who can provide us with internet access in our area. (HURRAY!) So, yes, it's been hard. The whole move has been hard, but we're getting there (despite the fact that two commodes belonging to the previous occupants are still in situ in the lounge - but what the hell - I can stick some tinsel round them and make an original and unusual decoration for christmas). And there are disadvantages to living in the sticks. But, I love living here. It's just lovely. I can sit at the computer and see hills out of the window, instead of flats. We can walk 100 yards from our door and feed the ducks. I can see the spire to the village church from our bedroom window and hear the bells on Sunday (and Thursday night too, when it's clearly bell-ringing practice night). The running is great too. On Sunday morning I ran up a very big hill along a lane from Bakewell to Monyash. It was a long, empty road surrounded by hills which had turned pale green under a light covering of frost. There was a timeless feel up there. In fact, I forgot that there was such a thing as time and ran for so long that I couldn't feel my knees anymore and even my husband (who never worries about anything) had started to worry about me. When I ran/staggered back down the hill I ran into a charming village which is (charmingly) all lit up for Christmas.

But there are definite disadvantages too. If there is no telephone network coverage, there is hardly any street lighting either (well, beyond the Christmas trees). It's virtually impossible to run any distance at all in the dark (And at this time of year, there is a lot of dark). So I'm down to one run a week. And I'm losing fitness because of it. It can't continue. I've got to find a way to train in the dark. My guess is that it's going to involve running up and down the main street in my husband's high-viz jacket and a head-torch, getting harrassed by the groups of bored teenagers who are perpetually hanging around outside the Spar shop, but if that's the way it's got to be, then that's the way it's got to be. And at least I can now walk to the local swimming pool and it only takes five minutes to get there.

Oh yes. The local swimming poool. The fact that it is local makes it easier to train for the swimming, but the advantages kind of end there. Put it this way, it ain't Pond's Forge. In fact, it's a 20m pool which, (I'm reliably informed) you have to swim eighty lengths of to have swum a mile. This information is, however, in fact superfluous because it is virtually impossible to swim eight lengths in the pool, never mind eighty, due to the combination of the bikini-clad teenagers doing handstands in the shallow end of the pool and pensioners with implausibly hairy backs doing backstroke up and down the pool. (They make allowances for no-one - if you don't get out of their way, it's like being run over by one of those old-fashioned doormats made out of coconuts). The shallow end, incidentally, is also the shallowest shallow end I've ever before encountered. The water only comes up to my mid-calf. I'm not tall. I'm 5'4". I don't know how deep the deep end is, but I'm guessing that's not that deep either. In fact, more of a shallow deep end. Still, at least it's cheap. And near. And somewhere to swim.

In all honesty, I cannot wait for the swim part to be over. Sadly, the time between now and reaching that blissful moment in my existence is ten whole months. In the meantime, my first event (the Great Winter Run, 10th January) is looming, and I can't wait for that one. Not just because it's the first event, but because I'm combining it with a weekend away with my sister. Who says fundraising can't be fun?

Don't forget you can sponsor me now at http://www.justgiving.com/valderbyshire and join in with all this fun too.