235 Days

Just over 3 weeks ago I ran a local trail marathon, the Ouse Valley Way marathon to be precise. It's a race that's been reintroduced/relaunched this year and was previously organised by the local running club, Riverside runners , but after an absence of a few year is now organised by BRJ Run & Tri , in Huntingdon. I've run parts of the route since I moved to the area, which is flat, so, so flat, so I had an idea of what to expect and in training runs had slowly been doing more and more of the route, but in reverse, because, er, that's how I do things.... During training I'd done 20 miles about 5 weeks before the race and was hoping to get a 22 miler under my belt before ending the psychological mind melt that is 'taper', but my last 2 attempts ended at 19 and 16 miles, both times I'd just run out of energy, fuelling, hot weather, all possible excuses but also planting a massive seed in my head and reminders of how I felt during the last 6 miles o...

Last week I watched the film 'Unbreakable' at the Curzon cinema in Richmond, it was at an event put on by Lululemon and found out about it via twitter, like most things these days. If you haven't seen Unbreakable you really should, it's a great film about the Western States 100, a legendary 100 miler in the US and the main contenders for the winners buckle one particular year. Anyway, after watching the film it's hard not to feel slightly inspired and invincible. I got back home and started looking at Ultra races, like you do, despite my last attempt not going to plan, and also despite the fact that since running Brighton marathon about six weeks ago I have barely run, a 10k and a few 5k. The main reason for this is that since Brighton, although maybe before but I hadn't noticed it, after running anything between 3-7k I feel like I'm running lop-sided and it feels uncomfortable, I prescribed myself a week of complete rest, not even getting back into ...

Run a marathon they said.... So, you may have noticed that Brighton Marathon was 9 days ago, so obviously this is the perfect time to write about my 1st marathon experience (yeah I know, I'll be writing about the  half marathons I did in March soon). In other words, don't always expect this blog to be totally on the ball with write ups etc. I signed up for Brighton marathon in a flurry of excitement when two of my favourite people on UKRunChat, @Digdeepdolly and @Jofwise announced they were signing up for their 1st marathons and seemingly were getting loads of people, myself included, to also join them for Brighton marathon. In truth all it took was a tweet from @digdeepdolly which basically said "goooooooo oooooooon doooooooooo iiiiiiiiiiitttttttt', which, looking back shows I didn't actually take much persuasion or somehow she's very persuasive by adding lots of vowels to words. As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, it all seemed very far away, then ...

We are now approaching the time where people training for spring marathons are hitting their biggest distances in training, and I am one of those people, sort of. I entered Brighton marathon in a blur of activity on the UKRunchat twitter page, where being egged on by various members, a load of us, I think about 50+, all entered Brighton marathon in the space of a few days. I was training for an Ultra at the time so it was a case of ' it should be alright, I'll be training for further than this distance so I know I'll be able to do it' but fast forward a few months and the ankle injury happened, which wiped me out for 8 months, meaning that I missed a few races that I'd already entered, but in the distance there was always 'Brighton' and the belief that I had time to get ready for it and give it a proper go. After being given the sort of all clear by the physio to start running just before Christmas, I have been slowly increasing the distance of my run...

Soooooooo 235 Days, what kind of title is that for a running blog? It doesn't sound very runnery (note: this blog is likely to contain made up words), and you're right, it doesn't, it doesn't have the word RUN in it anywhere, not fitness, nor journey, or any other kind of words that you'd normally find in a running blog title that I can't think of right now. But there is a reason for it being called 235 days, ah a reason you cry, it better be a good one. Right, so I've been meaning to start writing a running blog for some time, since I started to enjoy running a whole year and a bit ago but never really got around to it, then I should have started writing a blog about the whole journey during my attempt to take part in the London 2 Brighton challenge, but no I didn't. Then just as I was starting to really enjoy my running a couple of months after L2B I got injured during a race and knackered my ankle…. THE ANKLE. Those that know me through Twitte...