Catch up

I haven't posted for a little while as, to be honest, there's not much to add... All is ticking along very nicely (apart from the calendar which is suddenly whizzing along alarmingly fast - I turned the page this morning and now the Marathon's on the next page!). Six weeks tomorrow, which must mean I am 3/4 of the way through my training programme, and it's getting quite heavy duty now. My midweek run was 75 minutes this week, and tomorrow I must do 150 (2 1/2 hours), although I may make it slightly more in order to get to 14 miles if I can.

I had intended to do 14 miles last week but didn't quite make it. I know I could have carried on a bit longer but I'd already done more time than the plan said, and quite frankly I was done in (and bored). I went to Godalming and back. Now I had always thought Godalming was miles and miles away; turns out it's really not as far as all that. This is a strange thing I have discovered while planning routes that I anticipate will take me an hour, two hours etc. - nowhere is as far away as you think and you have to add bits on. Obviously a mile on your feet is much longer than a mile in the car.

Anyway, off I trotted last Sunday, road for the first part as the tow path through Guildford fell victim to the floods over Christmas and is washed away, then picking up the path through the town centre and out along the River Wey towards Godalming. I was hoping it would have dried out enough by now so as to be passable, and indeed for the most part it was. There were just a couple of muddy parts to hippety hop over and around, a fallen tree to crawl under, and a large party of ramblers to pick my way around without any of us falling in the water, and it was so much nicer than running along the roads. It was very windy (as in lots of wind, not lots of bends...) though, on the way out. At a couple of points I swear I was running backwards. Much easier coming back! I had finished my audio book during the week, and had been pointed in the direction of the Desert Island Discs podcast library as something good (and free) to listen to. It's not something I normally tune in to (more a Radio 2 girl) and I found it really interesting. For rights reasons they only play about 30 seconds of each tune on the podcast version, but it's more about the people really. Each episode is about 40 minutes, or roughly 3 miles, so on Sunday I got through Torvill and Dean, Sir Ben Ainslie, Ant and Dec (who were devastated when Kirsty told them they'd have to be on separate islands, it was quite sad!) and Clare Balding. 

I had done exactly six miles when the tow path became impassable (unless I'd been prepared to wade through the mud, which I wasn't) and I was just short of Godalming, so I turned around and came back at that point. On the whole I try and plan circular rather than there and back routes, but I didn't want to come back along the road, and anyway the view is different on the way back. This meant that by the time I'd got towards home I'd "only" done 12, but as I said, I was pretty tired at this point, so I just added half a trip around the block and came home. 151 minutes, 12.77 miles. Not even a half marathon! But I still have four long runs to go (one of which is the Surrey Half next weekend) before the pre-race taper starts. Tomorrow I am going to experiment with eating on the run, as the odd jelly baby here and there doesn't give me enough of an energy oomph to keep going much beyond the 2 1/2 hour mark. The energy bars I made last week are delicious but I'm not sure how easily portable they are. I'm going to chop one into tiny cubes tomorrow and hope it doesn't all melt and go too gooey in my bum bag... I'll let you know next week.

Oh, and I have a job! Wasn't looking for a job but the opportunity arose, so I went for an interview (something I haven't done for about 27 years) and I have a post as "Learning Assistant" at the National Trust, Dapdune Wharf - 18 hours a week from March to November, helping out with school visits and family fun days, and birthday parties. One of the questions they asked was "What experience do you have of organising children's birthday parties?". I could do that one! I start next week, although I have told them that until mid-April I may be somewhat preoccupied (and I better not catch a cold off anyone).

So, despite saying there wasn't much to say, I appear to have rambled on as usual. I do have a habit of that (I was worried I'd done it at my interview too, but they seemed very interested and pleased with what I had to say, and they liked me enough to give me the job). "Concise" is obviously not in my vocabulary!