Please just let me be better than Amy Willerton

Yesterday the London Marathon organisers published their list of "celebrity" entrants in this year's race, thereby opening themselves up to a stream of abuse on their Facebook page about how many of these people are not real celebrities and are denying genuine runners a place etc etc. I hope you can see the list here:

Marathon celebrity entrants

if you are interested. How many of them do you know?! Admittedly there are one or two genuine greats in there, a couple of Olympians and some serious runners like Michel Roux and Sophie Raworth, but Amy Willerton? Seriously? Although I may be doing her a disservice - she may indeed be out there every Sunday getting hot and sweaty and weeping over her sore hip flexors and despairing over how far she has yet to run... (And Michael Owen probably won't make it to the start without knackering his hamstring.) But I guess if they raise money for their good causes then good luck to them, self-taught milliners and all. 

(However, I must admit to being a tiny bit excited about Margaery Tyrell from Game of Thrones being in it - do you think she could introduce me to Jon Snow (who still knows nothing by the way)? That will mean nothing to non-GoT'ers, sorry - and it's coming back soon!! And Jimmy from Downton Abbey's in it too...)

But enough of them - we all know that all of the tens of thousands of ordinary people out there pounding through the endless wind and rain are the real superstars, even if we don't warrant a name check. There is still running going on; it's been an up and down week. On Thursday I had to do a "60 minute brisk" which I procrastinated and put off and off through the day because I was a bit scared of the "brisk" part, even though I knew there was only me who would ever really know if I cheated and just ran a regular 60 minutes. Eventually I told myself to man up and get out there, just as it started to rain (having been lovely all morning). It turned out to be just a light shower though and then the sun came back out, as well as a very gusty wind which doesn't help. I wasn't sure if I was running that much faster than normal - it all feels like bloomin' hard work to me - but I guess I must have been as I completed 5.79 miles in 64 minutes, at a time of 11:08 minutes per mile. That's a good half a minute or so quicker than normal and I was quietly chuffed (and loudly puffed!). This week's challenge is another 60 minutes brisk and "try and improve on last week's 60 mins distance".

Sunday's long run was a bit of a let down. After last week's half marathon I was feeling confident, and the plan said to drop back to "just" two hours, so how hard could that be? Unfortunately I skimped on breakfast; feeling full of Saturday's pasta still and wanting to get out a bit earlier so as not to disrupt lunchtime again, I didn't think I had time for porridge so just had half a banana and a bit of houmous on half a mini pitta. And right from the beginning I just felt a bit off; I couldn't summon up the energy to go at more than a trot and wasn't really feeling the love for the whole running malarkey at all. After all, it's incredibly tedious and painful, why would anyone want to do it? I went up to Brookwood again but via a different route so I only had time for a couple of laps when I got there. (It was very puddly this week too so lots of hippety hoppety dodging and weaving over wet bits.) Even then I slightly mistimed my heading for home so in fact had to run an extra 10 minutes or so over the two hours in order to get home - can't just stop in the middle of nowhere! I was listening to my audio book still, about running, and it was telling me about how I should be running more upright with my hips forward and my legs more directly below me so I was consciously trying to keep my hips forward, with the result that by the time I got home I could really feel it in my lower abs and hip flexors. This is why you need to do core strength and conditioning as well as running... I also had a lot of tension in my right shoulder for some reason, and a grumbling soreness in my left ankle and foot, and generally felt a bit rubbish. All afternoon I could feel myself stiffening up too, hobbling about every time I got up off the sofa (which wasn't often admittedly). 

Still, it was another session ticked off the plan, over two hours on my feet, over 11 miles covered and important lessons learned about the value of porridge, even if I do have to get up earlier. It felt really slow and laboured but turned out to be still under 12 minutes per mile (just) which actually I'd have been thrilled with not that long ago. I have to keep reminding myself how far I have come and how much fitter I am than I have ever been, even if the weight is still refusing to shift. And, as a friend on the Virgin Marathon running forum said: "It's really easy to beat yourself up over the miles you don't do and much harder to praise yourself for the miles you do do." So well done me! 

PS If you didn't watch "I'm a Celebrity..." last year and don't know who Amy Willerton is: