On people being majestic

At the back of my mind, this weekend's West Highland Way Race looms. I'm support crewing for Amanda, and every time she talks about being nervous, I find myself getting less so. It's a strange correlation, but I'm convinced her training has been thorough, and she is as ready as she can be, so I've calmed down about it considerably - my role this weekend will be to support her, to my very best ability, on her way to getting her first goblet. She has a huge support crew assembled for the race, so hopefully we work well together and don't get under each other's feet at checkpoints, etc. but they're good folk, and I'm adept at getting out of the way when necessary, so I'm sure we'll be absolutely fine. How we do is only secondary to how Amanda does, and as long as we meet her needs (and Diva Demands, haha) our work is done. That said, there are a few things I need to remember... Try to rest when possible, don't get overexcited, and make sure to eat and drink sufficiently myself to last the whole race without dehydration headaches, etc. The midge fight becomes key for support crew, at some of the stages, but I'm currently pretending it won't. :-) I can't say I'm not a little nervous about whether the grudge-race (I would explain, but I frankly don't want to give it any more air time) organised this year on the same route an hour earlier will cause problems at checkpoints or out on the route, but it is what it is, and I'm sure the runners will be courteous and helpful to each other, out there on the course, regardless. And Amanda, no matter what happens, is going to be bloody amazing!!! I can't wait. x

Anyway. My own running continues, slowly and frustratingly - but I'm getting out there. I'm trying to do 3 or 4 runs a week, consistently, and I've been doing things like interval sessions and hill reps, in order to build things up. Yesterday I ran the Race For Life 10km in Holyrood Park, and although it measured 9.1km, I actually finished slower than most of my full 10ks in the past, in about 77 minutes. Slower than what I should be capable of, by far. It's a tough route, up around Queens Drive, then the long gentler hill to Duddingston and back, before the downhill to the finish - and being a Race for Life, it was heavily populated with people who were walking from the outset (and ignored the guidance to start behind the runners) so it was difficult to try and get any reasonable speed up at the start, and a real challenge to try and find gaps in people to try and do some short runs on the big hill - I mentally didn't much push myself, and largely I walked. I tried to stop from berating myself as much as possible, and I focussed on the positives I could take away from it (there were a few bits on the long downhill where I felt like I was running well, and overtaking loads of people), but largely, the feeling I had when I left is I want to be a runner. I need to make sure I put the work in, and it's 15 weeks until I need to be able to run about 9-10 miles for the Clyde Stride Ultra relay, so I can't ignore that. Becoming a runner is not going to happen just from wishing for it, I need to put the work in. I've made a good start recently with incorporating some tough challenging wee sessions into my week, so just need to build on that from there. And hill reps. Definitely the hill reps. It's going to hurt, it's not going to be pretty, but people don't reach their goals by sitting on their bums watching TV and eating cake. (Unless their goals are to eat a lot of cake, and watch an entire box-set of that show everyone's been talking about...)

I've been tracking my daily steps using a Fitbit Zip pedometer for the past 2 months, and have been really impressed with how I've done. My aim was to beat 10,000 steps a day, but for the last month I've averaged over 15,000 a day!! I'm going to move my target higher than 10k, and keep things going. On top of that, gym work continues reasonably well, and this week I had a go at boxing padwork, which was tough but fun. I was dripping with sweat by the end of it!! Starting to see increases in my ability again, and although in some cases I'm not back to where I used to be, in others I'm pretty pleased with how things are going. Doing sets of clean and press lifts, for example, with a bar weighing over 15kgs is tough (the shoulder press bit) but I'm managing - they'll get easier the more I do them. I'm noticing my weak wrists are letting me down in some areas, though - my wrists hurt long before my muscles fatigue in things like tricep dips, mountain climbers, and press-ups. I'll work on that, though maybe it's wiser to work those muscles in different ways, as well.

There's lots to be celebrating about my fitness routines at the moment, but my weight continues plodding along at this exact same heavily overweight level. Might be because I keep ramming tubs of icecream, armfuls of doughnuts, and stupid quantities of sandwiches down my neck. (I exaggerate, but not by much...) - a new approach is needed to be taken here. I know exactly what I should be eating, I'm choosing not to, and I've been choosing to do that for far too long, and so now I'm getting to the bottom of why I'm making that choice, in order to change it. A little bit of self-accountability can go a long way, so I'm going to start tracking again, only this time trying to record what I eat along with how I'm feeling. I'm not great at acknowledging my feelings at the best of times, so this will be a new challenge. And if nothing else, my food diary from this coming Saturday and Sunday on the WHW (especially when we're 22 oe 23 hours in, for example!) will be a bit of a laugh!

I got told I was to celebrate my majesticness, yesterday, and I also got told that any more calling my running 'rubbish' would result in the biggest arse-kicking I've ever known, so... I'd better get better at celebrating my awesomeness. :-) I shall run more often, work as hard as I can, and celebrate my majesticity whenever I get the chance. I can be bloody awesome, just you wait and see...