Week One

Monday - 10 miles

Tuesday - 8 miles

Saturday - 90 minutes (9 miles)

Sunday - 3.5 hours (19 miles)

After a few weeks of pretty light training, this week has involved a LOT of running!  Monday I went out with my boyfriend for a gentle loop along the river and around Battersea Park, we ran together for most of it then I had to rush home to go to the loo, resulting in this graph of my daily steps: 

Tuesday I went out with Midnight Runners for the first time in ages, I'd forgotten how great it is to be with a group of 100+ people.  They definitely contributed to my training when I was doing my first marathon so it's good to be back.  No better way to spend a Tuesday night!

Saturday was supposed to be a gentle warmup for Sunday, I decided to do some trails as I was at home in Horsham and there's so much pretty countryside around there.  It was indeed beautiful:

Here's a panorama from yesterday compared with the same view a few weeks ago, this is one of my very favourite spots, it's gorgeous:

 

Unfortunately it turned out to involve a lot of mud and a LOT of hills:

  

But I felt okay so hoped I'd got away with it.

Unfortunately not.  I was late leaving the house this morning  and misjudged the distance so ended up having to run to Horsham Joggers (my local club) at quite a pace so as not to miss the start.  I arrived, slightly flustered, just as they were leaving, so had to turn around and get cracking immediately.   My Garmin couldn't manage to get a GPS signal so I didn't record the run, which annoys me as it 'spoils my record' (such a gadget nerd)!

Then I started having a few gastro issues, resulting in two unscheduled toilet stops in a bush, which meant I was at the very back of the group.  Spot the runner in front of me just disappearing into the distance in the photo...  As I got more and more tired, my brain helpfully started popping up thoughts such as, "Maybe you should just give up and phone for a lift?  You obviously aren't fit enough for this," and then I got lost.  I didn't have a map because I'd arrived late, so what was meant to be a 3 hour run turned into a 3.5 hour one.  My legs had had enough and so had I.  Not the best start but I had a lovely hot shower, a lovely hot lunch and am feeling fine now :)

In kidney news, the local paper published an interview I did with them over Christmas, and even put me in a little box on the bottom right of the front page!

You can read the article here.  They focus more on the kidney than the ultra, which in my mind is the wrong way round as that's the easy bit!  Still, I'm sure my mum will be proud and will probably keep the newspaper for the rest of eternity....

I've had a brilliant week for donations and I think I'm probably safe from losing my marathon place now.  There's still lots of fundraising to do but at least I can get on with running without that threat hanging over me!  All sponsorship is greatly appreciated and my page is here.