I did a fairly tough interval session this morning…
…and I’ve been ravenous ever since. I need to start organising a more substantial lunch for Tuesdays! Geth and I are trying to shift the lockdown weight at the moment but I need to balance that with fuelling for runs as well.
I’ve just been getting on with work and household admin this afternoon. Accounts done, diary done, car MOT booked for next week. It’s a bit dull but a lighter work week gives me the opportunity to get stuff like that out of the way. Hoping to have a bit more time for writing towards the end of the week as well.
Looking forward to a quiet evening with TV and/or YouTube videos. I could do with switching my brain off for a bit.
These fireworks leggings are my favourites for running at the moment. I’ll need to make sure they’re clean for Bonfire Night in a few weeks’ time 🙂
Today’s earworm playlist:
Benny Goodman – ‘Sing Sing Sing (With A Swing)’ Cast of Moulin Rouge! – ‘El Tango De Roxanne’ Sacre – ‘The London Marathon [Theme From The Trap]’
One final practice mile in the rain today before my 24-hour challenge / Virtual London Marathon, which starts at midnight tonight…
…and it looks like the rain will be continuing through the night, so that will provide a bit of a distraction for the first few laps as Geth and I try to keep dry in between runs!
I’ve done just about everything I can to prepare, and at least I still have time in between laps if I find I’ve forgotten anything before I get started.
Here’s the link to my JustGiving page again – I just need a few more donations to hit my fundraising target of £300 for the RNLI, so any spare pennies will be gratefully received!
Keep an eye on my social media feeds (links at top of blog) for updates during the challenge. I may also post a couple of unrelated blogs tomorrow, as I hopefully will have a bit of time between runs for getting them written!
Otherwise, see you on the other side…
I very much doubt we’ll eat all of this stuff in one day, but it’s best to be prepared. This gives me lots of options so that I can go by what my body feels it needs in between runs.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Queen – ‘Bicycle Race’ Sacre – ‘The London Marathon [Theme From The Trap]’
…and there’s just one more to go tomorrow morning/lunchtime (depending on how well my sleep preparation goes) before the big challenge starts at midnight! I’m so excited and so nervous 😯
I spent today finishing off all my day job work for the week, and then this evening I drove to Asda with Geth to pick up all the stuff needed for Sunday. I can’t eat big meals during the 24-hour challenge as it gives me a bad stitch if I eat too much just before running, but I still need to make sure I have enough fuel on board during the day. As such, I will be carefully grazing throughout the day, aiming for about 200 calories worth of snacks between each run (as I will burn 150 on each 1.2-mile lap). I have lots of boxes of small bakery bites (flapjacks and so on), protein bars, energy gels, crisps for when I need something savoury, bananas, berries… and an absolute ton of coffee and Pepsi Max to keep me awake haha!
The last time I experienced a marathon weekend was a very different type of London Marathon. Though the way I’m running the marathon couldn’t be more different, I’m equally excited! I also had the confirmation email today that they’ve successfully deferred my ‘real’ London Marathon place to October 2021, so a year from now I will be back doing it traditionally (assuming this awful pandemic has retreated by then!).
I usually only post running vlogs over the weekend, but I expect I’ll have lots to say tomorrow so will probably update as normal.
I order a lot of Lucy Locket Loves leggings at the moment (they’re brightly coloured and I have found they are a very effective way of cheering myself up during this awful year) and they often put free gifts in the packages. This mini dinosaur has got detached from his hair bobble, so I think I might turn him into a brooch at some point.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Cast of Pocahontas – ‘Colours Of The Wind’ Fifth Harmony and Ty Dolla Sign – ‘Work From Home’ Limahl – ‘Neverending Story’
…and then Geth and I went shopping in town. Geth bought some new Keyforge decks to celebrate having completed his 100th parkrun, and I am now the proud owner of a new pair of running shoes. My old ones were not coping well with my newfound daily running habit and had worn down to the foam! I will be getting a few new pairs over the course of the next few months, as rotating the shoes means that they don’t wear down as fast (apparently the shoes need forty-eight hours to ‘recover’ in between runs!).
We then went for a meal with Mum and Dad for pre-race carb-loading. I think I’m as ready as I can be for tomorrow – just a good night’s sleep needed now.
The pop-up sign is a bit broken and sad-looking (I think it’s probably suffered the ill effects of some strong winds in recent months), but Whin Park is such a beautiful location for a parkrun!
Today’s earworm playlist:
Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack – ‘Tonight I Celebrate My Love For You’ Culture Club – ‘Victims’ Toto – ‘Africa’ Vera van Heeringen – ‘Riverside House’ Status Quo – ‘The Wanderer’ Duran Duran – ‘Shadows On Your Side’
…which meant I was a bit too wiped to do much else today, as is becoming typical on Sundays! I spent the afternoon doing a bit more work for my weekend client and watching the second day of the athletics on TV.
I’ve also eaten everything in sight since I got back from my run. I need to be a bit more careful with that as even a super-long run doesn’t provide quite enough spare calories for all the nice things I crave once I’m back home! Back to healthy meals for the next few days.
Cake tastes amazing post-run. Well, not immediately post-run, as I need to stop feeling sick first, but a few hours later.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Tyler Lyle – ‘Lost And Found [The Midnight Remix]’ Koichi Sugiyama – ‘Unflinchable Courage’ Katy Perry – ‘Roar’
I went for a long sleep-inducing run in the sort-of storm today…
…and since then have just been chilling out on the sofa and eating a lot. 1000+ calorie burn for the win 😀 Geth tried out a new recipe for banana pancakes after I got home, which I think is going to be our new go-to for late post-run breakfast on Sundays.
No day job work scheduled tomorrow so I’m hoping for a productive day getting some admin done!
So much for Storm Ciara! It was really quite sunny at points on my run today.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Sidney Samson and Wizard Sleeve – ‘Riverside (Let’s Go!)’ Counting Crows – ‘Mr Jones’ Reef – ‘Place Your Hands’ The Midnight – ‘Memories’
I have been really late with catching up with all my blogging since I got back from holiday. I’m very busy with the day job at the moment and haven’t had much time. However, I finally have a chance now to post all about my travels – better late than never!
Geth and I drove up to Mum and Dad’s in Edinburgh on the Sunday to meet up with the family – my brother and sister-in-law Malcolm and Steff had arrived from Canada on the Saturday – before we all travelled north. On the Monday, it was another long drive up to Aberdeen, with a brief lunch stop in Arbroath for some chippy goodness – separate post to follow at some point!
It was a bit of a wait to get onto the ferry but I was pleased to find that the small cars were loaded first – this meant that once my wee Skoda was in place on the car deck, Geth and I were able to grab a good space for the family in the lounge bar for the evening.
It was a fairly pleasant ferry journey north to Shetland, although first-time sailor Steff found it a bit nausea-inducing. In the morning, as soon as I’d driven to the B&B, I found a space to get on with some work – August has been busy from the off this year!
It was nice running around Lerwick – a good way to see the town again after twelve years, especially as we had to do three laps to make the scheduled 14k we were both running that week! It was back to the Dowry for breakfast, as I’d been eyeing up the waffles the day before, and decided I’d earned them after my run.
Probably completely undid any calorie deficit I’d accomplished with the run. Delicious though!
I had a fairly quiet Wednesday afternoon – I had a bit of work to do again – before meeting up with the family for a meal at an Indian restaurant where we’d eaten when we were last in Shetland twelve years ago.
On the Thursday, Geth and I drove down to Sumburgh so that we could visit the excavation at Old Scatness. It wasn’t really open when we were last in Shetland as it had only recently been excavated, but they’ve got a nice wee visitor centre nowadays. Geth loved the site and could probably have stayed there for another hour!
A bit windswept at the Old Scatness site!
Back in Lerwick, we had an afternoon snack at the Dowry, and a chippy with the family again for tea. (On reflection I’m amazed that I only put on half a pound during the holiday! I did do a fair bit of running though…)
Geth and I met up with Malcolm and Steff for breakfast (at the Dowry again, you’ll be amazed to learn) on the Friday morning, and then went to the Shetland Museum. The museum hasn’t really changed since we visited in 2007, but it’s always worth a poke around.
This is the deck plan that hung on the wall of the passenger deck of the St Clair IV, the P&O ferry on which we always travelled to Shetland in the ’80s and ’90s when I was a kid. I must have looked at that deck plan on the actual ship a hundred times back in the day, and the fact that it’s now in a museum makes me feel a bit old.
In the evening, we met up with relatives Joyce and Douglas at the Waterfront restaurant. There was a lot of fish eaten by everyone else, but I was pleased to find that the veggie option was my old favourite, pasta and pesto. Cheesecake too, which is always welcome (see forthcoming cheesecake roundup post).
On the Saturday morning, Geth and I packed all of our remaining stuff into the car and then went on foot on the Bressay ferry to get to the start line of Bressay parkrun. After parkrun, we visited Joyce and Douglas for lunch and a brief tour of Bressay in the mist, before heading back to Lerwick so that I could get some work admin sorted out courtesy of the Dowry’s wifi.
Later that afternoon, we all drove back to the ferry terminal, and Geth and I and the Skoda got onboard nice and promptly again! It was a slightly bumpier ride than going up, and again I found it difficult to sleep on the boat, but we arrived nice and early in Aberdeen and the Sunday morning traffic was so quiet that we were back in Edinburgh by ten o’clock.
We had a couple more days in Edinburgh – I had to spend all of Sunday and Monday working, but Geth and I were able to meet up with our friend Kieran on the Monday night, and then we went to the City Cafe with Malcolm and Steff to have breakfast with my cousin Freya and her boyfriend Ryan on the Tuesday morning, before Geth and I headed back to Newcastle in the afternoon.
Hopefully it won’t be another twelve years before I make it back to Shetland again!
Geth and I are back in Newcastle after a nice weekend in Colne with the in-laws. We ate lots of good food (mostly on plan), played lots of boardgames and had another go at Pendle parkrun.
Today’s been a fairly quiet day as we were travelling back, but I did get my long run done on the treadmill once we were home. As the runs get longer, I’m obviously finding them a bit more tiring, and I also find I need to eat a lot of bananas for energy.
Back to the writing and editing tomorrow.
OOTD: I love this plant in my sister-in-law’s house. Glasses Emporio Armani (2017), dress Triumph (vintage 1980s, bought at vintage fair 2018), belt H&M (2017), tights Primark (2018).
Today’s earworm playlist:
Eisenfunk – Pong George Ezra – Shotgun Traditional – Michael, Row The Boat Ashore Redfoo – Party Train Yazoo – Only You Panic! At The Disco – High Hopes Bananarama – Nathan Jones
