First ever Blog!

I have never written a blog of any sort in my life and I need to start mentioning Helen M and Beth W from Jessie May for all the help they have given me to get to this point. I have spent probably a week going to them and asking silly questions about how to do stuff or just bringing them another problem with my web page or this blog. Thank you both for patience.

Well here goes.......I hope to make this blog as open and as fun as possible to try to give you an insight into my training. I have decided to take up the challenge of running for 24 hours and raise £3000 for a charity that is very close to my heart, it is called Jessie May. Please visit their website to find out more about this amazing charity. My target is £3000 as this is the daily running cost for Jessie May.
The first few months you will hear me talk a lot about training for a marathon rather than about the 24 hour challenge (Although i will mention it from time to time), this is because I will be running the Newport marathon on the 5th May 2019 (I have put a link so if anyone wants to join me you can sign up here). I am following a training plan that the Virgin Money London marathon supply to people who are lucky enough to get a place, I unfortunately wasn’t lucky this year or the past two years for that matter :( ,I am not bitter in a way! I am doing the intermediate level and have just completed the fourth week.

Tuesday 22nd January
I was up at 6 am for this morning’s run which was fartlek training. The reason I run at this crazy time of the morning is because I find it hard to find the time to run in the evenings. This is because I have a 2 year old boy to entertain, bath and get into bed after a full day’s work. It was FREEZING this morning and almost every path had ice on it, trying to run fast today was like trying to sprint across an ice rink. I managed to run almost 5 miles in 50 minutes, I quite enjoyed Fartlek training. To keep me entertained during my run today I listened to a podcast, this is new to me but I would highly recommend it to anyone who is doing a training run. I have a couple of favorite podcasts which include the Infinite Monkey Cage and the other one is called Flintoff, Savage and the Ping Pong Guy. So today I listened to the Infinite Monkey Cage and the topic was The Origin of Numbers. I learnt from this that apparently fish can count, who would have thought that!

Thursday 24th January
This morning I had a bit of a lie in as I wasn’t due into work until 11 am. I was still out of the house by 7.30 am; thankfully today it wasn't as cold as Tuesday. Today was a simple hours run so I did an out and back. I set my watch up so that after 30 minutes it would vibrate and I would know to turn round and head home. The entertainment for this run was a play list I had made for my mates 30th birthday party. This consisted of songs from between 2005 -2010 and this meant that I was doing a lot of singing out loud! Luckily no one was really around at this time and didn’t have to listen to my out of tune singing. I ran just under 6 miles at just over 10 minute miles.

Saturday 26th January

Parkrun day! I love Parkrun and everyone that runs should sign up to their local Parkrun! Today was my 42nd Parkrun, I have done most of these in the local area but I have done a few further afield which included the original course in Bushy Park, London. I was running with my dad this morning at Chipping Sodbury. We were aiming for a nice gentle run this morning and a time of about 33 minutes. I had a bit of aching in my calf muscles from the runs earlier in the week so this was not an opportunity to go for a PB. After two laps dad had a stitch, so as I was feeling OK I decided to see how far up the order I could get. I managed to finish in 200th place with a time of 29.23. I didn’t think that was bad considering i was behind the 34 minute pacer when I left dad.

Sunday 27th January

No early morning run today as i was up in Birmingham with my family seeing friends, instead I went out at about 5 pm for an hour and a half. It wasn’t too cold but it was windy. This made running up hills a bit harder than usual and no one needs that when running up a hill! I ran 9.44 miles at a pace of 9.33 minute/miles. This is a lot faster than I expect to be running the Newport marathon at but when things are feeling good you just got to go with it. My calf muscles were feeling very sore during my run so it was straight into the bath when I go home to relax. I use a product from Lush called 93,000 miles on my muscles after a run. I’m not convinced it works but I was given it for free so no harm in giving it a go (If anyone can recommend any other products to try I am all ears). One silly thing that makes me laugh ever time i notice it is that on the side of the pot is a little sticker that says a guy called Scott made it…….. Cheers Scott!I shall also be using my foam roller on my calf muscles later tonight, more on that next week.
I hope you all have a good week and take care!
Steve