Oh Edinburgh. What an amazing place to visit and how much pain it brought me :). Last weekend was the third time I've visited Edinburgh and on Sunday 23rd May I ran the Edinburgh marathon for the second time. After last year's experience I was originally decided not to do this (or any other) marathon again but during one of our nights out with Paul we've come to the conclusion that a marathon would be a good way of training for Kili. Seriously, making decisions while lubricated by alcohol is not the best idea ever...
But there we were, ready and excited to show Edinburgh and the hottest weekend of the year that neither will knock us down. My training wasn't brilliant so apart from the excitement I was also feeling a little worried and this worry has grown into a big heavy knot in the pit of my stomach during Saturday. The lack of sleep didn't help (noisy and drunk hotel guests in and outside the hotel, thank you very much) although the morning started well with overcast sky and even a slight drizzle. Unfortunately as Paul has described in his post, the sun has decided to emerge just before the 10am start and remained happy and shining on the sky until the end of the day.
The route of the Edinburgh marathon is very flat and that's why it's considered the fastest marathon in the UK. It starts under the Calton Hill near the City centre and leads through the Holyrood Park towards Portobello beach (it's very difficult to run along the beach and not to be able to have a dip!!!) and out from the town to Musselburgh, Prestonpans (main feature being the power plant), Cockenzie and Port Seton and further towards the Gosford House where you basically turn around and run back to the Musselburgh racecourse. The route was also exactly the same as last year so I knew what to expect and sometimes I wished I didn't know. Hobbling on the incredibly hot road with head down, sweating and feeling my face being burnt I was thinking about what it's going to be like on Kilimanjaro without any nice people showering us with hose pipes, with uneven terrain and no seaside view. Also, in the marathon I knew that at some point that day I would finish (either on my own legs or being collected by the sweeping vehicle :-D) and enjoy the very cool pint of beer but on Kilimanjaro we won't have this until day seven when we get back... Still, the idea of the challenge pushed me (although very slowly) through the race and I've finished in 5 hours 13 minutes 9 seconds which is (incredibly) my new PB too!
The amazing weekend wasn't at the end yet though and although this doesn't have anything to do with Kili I HAVE to mention it :). It's my patriotic duty to express my big happiness and gratefulness for the Czech ice hockey team which led our country to the victory in Ice Hockey World Championships in the game against Russia on Sunday evening! After five years we made it again and the victory felt so much sweeter as we were classed as underdogs from the very beginning of the championship. The beer we had in a little Czech pub called Pivo (Beer) was a fantastic celebration of all the achievements of that day.
Two days later I am glad to say I don't feel any real pain or soreness, the main injury being my sunburnt face! I would like to think that the lack of pain is the result of my recent strength exercising and that my fitness level is not as bad as I originally thought. Bring on Kili then :-) (Ok, still a few weeks to go...)
Oh and Paul, congratulations on your completion, it's a great achievement! Now multiply the efforts by ten and you get what it feels like to be on Kili :)))
Tuesday 25 May 2010
Edinburgh Marathon
When I started writing this blog I was very keen that it would be about Kilimanjaro and not be covering things in my general life, unfortunately the closer I get to going (now only 115 days!) the lines between things I am doing for me and things I am doing towards Kili seem to be getting more and more blurred.
Anyway I ran the Edinburgh Marathon on 23rd May and completed it in 5 hours 1 minute and 30 seconds, not the greatest time ever set (the winner was under 2 and a half hours!) but I have at least completed a marathon!
I’ve wanted to complete a marathon for a long time. I’m not sure if it was one of those pipe dreams that I would never really complete and just continually dream about or if one day I would do all the training and complete it. Anyway I have got to the point now where I registered for the marathon and had a hotel booked so I at least had to go. Plus Darina had ran the Edinburgh marathon the previous year and said it was the UK’s easiest marathon (flat, it was still 26.2 miles) as well as being a fantastic city to see.
Edinburgh is a beautiful city and well worth visiting, seems strange that I am 37 years old and my only trip to Scotland previously was when I was a kid going on a Hoseasons holiday with my parents.
We drove up on the Friday morning and got there at around 1.30pm, after dumping the car at the hotel we took a walk in to town. The weather was around 24 degrees which was perfect for sightseeing and over the Friday afternoon and Saturday we managed to cover a lot of the town without doing anything too strenuous that would jeopardise our waking up fresh for the marathon, the only problem in the whole town was that at bus stops people waiting do their best to obstruct as much of the pavement as possible then tut and complain when you push past them or ask them to move! After a completely sober Saturday night with a pasta meal we headed off to bed to prepare for the next day……
On Sunday morning we woke up at around 7am to find a beautiful grey sky with light rain. Everyone in the hotel was down for breakfast at 8am and even though the hotel was only offering croissants and toast for breakfast he was still a little overrun. We left at around 8.30 to grab a bus to the start point, this was all quite well organised and after leaving our bags with a dedicated truck we made our way to the start point. There were different areas to start and we were pretty much at the back based on our expected finish time.
The marathon was due to start at 10am and duly at around 9.50am the sun that had been present for the previous week came out and all of the clouds dispersed, great! A little too late to worry too much about the temperature or applying sunscreen now though!
I’m not really sure how the marathon started whether it was a gunshot or a whistle but eventually we were all suddenly trudging slowly forward through all the different start areas until we eventually crossed the line and started to run. The first water station was located just after mile 3 and quite near our hotel, I grabbed a bottle and carried on running, after a couple of drinks from the bottle I tipped the rest over my head in an attempt to cool down, this felt fantastic and cooled my head instantly and as the water ran down and soaked my t-shirt the rest of me cooled down quickly. Unfortunately as I carried on running with a wet t-shirt this began to rub my nipples after only 5 miles, by 26.2 miles and after various other soakings they were raw.
I’d like to say a massive thank you to the people of Edinburgh. Most of the roads we ran on were completely closed off and had signs requesting people to not park on the street from around 5am until 6pm so they had been massively inconvenienced yet they were still there to continually clap and shout for every single runner over several hours (It took me a couple of miles to realise that the people on the side didn’t know the names of everyone but were just shouting encouragement based on the name on the running gear, duh!), offer orange segments and jelly babies and even some of them to soak us with hosepipes which was greatly appreciated!
The route that we were running started in the city centre but finished in a separate area called Musselburgh, as part of the run it looped back on itself so on one side of the road I was doing mile 12 while I could see the race leader completing mile 23 on the other side of the road, he would be finished in around 20 minutes and I wasn’t even half way around! That kind of knocked my motivation a little!
I managed to run continually until around mile 16, I then stopped to walk for a few hundred yards and then started to run again, but from this point on it was very much a hobbling run and walk. I’m not sure if it was down to exhaustion or anything else but by about mile 19 though I had also become an emotional blubbering wreck! A family had come to wave and cheer the guy in front of me and as he stopped to hug his daughter I was near tears. A small boy on the beach was offering some raisins to runners and then running back to his mom to get some more and then coming back to offer them to runners and an elderly man that was wearing a leg cast and playing bagpipes that I saw at mile 6, 14 and 22 also had me in tears!
As the miles counted down and I eventually saw the 25 mile mark I started to run more again, there were more people on the side cheering on at this point and it really is incredibly motivating to make you run when random people are cheering you on to the finish line, so I ran a large chunk of the last 1.2 miles and eventually crossed the finish line and collected my medal, goody bag and a final bottle of Lucozade sport that was finished within seconds of me receiving it!
When we eventually met up at the end (and after I had waved desperately trying to attract the attention of some random woman that I thought was Darina crossing the finish line when the real Darina tapped me on the shoulder) we made our way to the shuttle bus area back to the city centre. Although the marathon had been impeccably organised until this point the buses were terrible, after completing a marathon we then had a 2 mile walk to the point where the buses were! Come on Edinburgh, we’ve just ran 26.2 miles give us a break!
We caught the bus back to the hotel and then went for a shower where we compared the various sunburn patches that we had along with the other various aches and pains. Then we headed off for a well earned trip to Pizza Hut and a few beers in a Czech bar that we had found on the Saturday (Darina (who is originally from Czech in case you didn’t know)) asked the barman of he was from Czech which he replied no in a very Scottish accent and she then launched in to several sentences of Czech where he just stared at her!).
To cap a fantastic day the Czech republic also won the Ice Hockey world cup tournament beating Russia (the winners of the previous 2 tournaments – I didn’t know that either), which we celebrated with a few Czech beers in the Czech bar with no other people who cared whatsoever!
As a summary lessons to learn for anyone who decides to do a marathon
1 – Wear sunscreen (was that by Baz Luhrman?) regardless of the weather at the start.
2 – Take a binbag to keep you warm at the start, you may look silly but it will keep you warm.
3 – Stick your name in big letters on you somewhere!
4 – Try wetting the top you plan to use for the race and running in it in advance, you may look silly when you try it but believe me you will thank me on this one more than any of the others!
5 – Try to choose a route that doesn’t loop back on its self.
Anyway I ran the Edinburgh Marathon on 23rd May and completed it in 5 hours 1 minute and 30 seconds, not the greatest time ever set (the winner was under 2 and a half hours!) but I have at least completed a marathon!
I’ve wanted to complete a marathon for a long time. I’m not sure if it was one of those pipe dreams that I would never really complete and just continually dream about or if one day I would do all the training and complete it. Anyway I have got to the point now where I registered for the marathon and had a hotel booked so I at least had to go. Plus Darina had ran the Edinburgh marathon the previous year and said it was the UK’s easiest marathon (flat, it was still 26.2 miles) as well as being a fantastic city to see.
Edinburgh is a beautiful city and well worth visiting, seems strange that I am 37 years old and my only trip to Scotland previously was when I was a kid going on a Hoseasons holiday with my parents.
We drove up on the Friday morning and got there at around 1.30pm, after dumping the car at the hotel we took a walk in to town. The weather was around 24 degrees which was perfect for sightseeing and over the Friday afternoon and Saturday we managed to cover a lot of the town without doing anything too strenuous that would jeopardise our waking up fresh for the marathon, the only problem in the whole town was that at bus stops people waiting do their best to obstruct as much of the pavement as possible then tut and complain when you push past them or ask them to move! After a completely sober Saturday night with a pasta meal we headed off to bed to prepare for the next day……
On Sunday morning we woke up at around 7am to find a beautiful grey sky with light rain. Everyone in the hotel was down for breakfast at 8am and even though the hotel was only offering croissants and toast for breakfast he was still a little overrun. We left at around 8.30 to grab a bus to the start point, this was all quite well organised and after leaving our bags with a dedicated truck we made our way to the start point. There were different areas to start and we were pretty much at the back based on our expected finish time.
The marathon was due to start at 10am and duly at around 9.50am the sun that had been present for the previous week came out and all of the clouds dispersed, great! A little too late to worry too much about the temperature or applying sunscreen now though!
I’m not really sure how the marathon started whether it was a gunshot or a whistle but eventually we were all suddenly trudging slowly forward through all the different start areas until we eventually crossed the line and started to run. The first water station was located just after mile 3 and quite near our hotel, I grabbed a bottle and carried on running, after a couple of drinks from the bottle I tipped the rest over my head in an attempt to cool down, this felt fantastic and cooled my head instantly and as the water ran down and soaked my t-shirt the rest of me cooled down quickly. Unfortunately as I carried on running with a wet t-shirt this began to rub my nipples after only 5 miles, by 26.2 miles and after various other soakings they were raw.
I’d like to say a massive thank you to the people of Edinburgh. Most of the roads we ran on were completely closed off and had signs requesting people to not park on the street from around 5am until 6pm so they had been massively inconvenienced yet they were still there to continually clap and shout for every single runner over several hours (It took me a couple of miles to realise that the people on the side didn’t know the names of everyone but were just shouting encouragement based on the name on the running gear, duh!), offer orange segments and jelly babies and even some of them to soak us with hosepipes which was greatly appreciated!
The route that we were running started in the city centre but finished in a separate area called Musselburgh, as part of the run it looped back on itself so on one side of the road I was doing mile 12 while I could see the race leader completing mile 23 on the other side of the road, he would be finished in around 20 minutes and I wasn’t even half way around! That kind of knocked my motivation a little!
I managed to run continually until around mile 16, I then stopped to walk for a few hundred yards and then started to run again, but from this point on it was very much a hobbling run and walk. I’m not sure if it was down to exhaustion or anything else but by about mile 19 though I had also become an emotional blubbering wreck! A family had come to wave and cheer the guy in front of me and as he stopped to hug his daughter I was near tears. A small boy on the beach was offering some raisins to runners and then running back to his mom to get some more and then coming back to offer them to runners and an elderly man that was wearing a leg cast and playing bagpipes that I saw at mile 6, 14 and 22 also had me in tears!
As the miles counted down and I eventually saw the 25 mile mark I started to run more again, there were more people on the side cheering on at this point and it really is incredibly motivating to make you run when random people are cheering you on to the finish line, so I ran a large chunk of the last 1.2 miles and eventually crossed the finish line and collected my medal, goody bag and a final bottle of Lucozade sport that was finished within seconds of me receiving it!
When we eventually met up at the end (and after I had waved desperately trying to attract the attention of some random woman that I thought was Darina crossing the finish line when the real Darina tapped me on the shoulder) we made our way to the shuttle bus area back to the city centre. Although the marathon had been impeccably organised until this point the buses were terrible, after completing a marathon we then had a 2 mile walk to the point where the buses were! Come on Edinburgh, we’ve just ran 26.2 miles give us a break!
We caught the bus back to the hotel and then went for a shower where we compared the various sunburn patches that we had along with the other various aches and pains. Then we headed off for a well earned trip to Pizza Hut and a few beers in a Czech bar that we had found on the Saturday (Darina (who is originally from Czech in case you didn’t know)) asked the barman of he was from Czech which he replied no in a very Scottish accent and she then launched in to several sentences of Czech where he just stared at her!).
To cap a fantastic day the Czech republic also won the Ice Hockey world cup tournament beating Russia (the winners of the previous 2 tournaments – I didn’t know that either), which we celebrated with a few Czech beers in the Czech bar with no other people who cared whatsoever!
As a summary lessons to learn for anyone who decides to do a marathon
1 – Wear sunscreen (was that by Baz Luhrman?) regardless of the weather at the start.
2 – Take a binbag to keep you warm at the start, you may look silly but it will keep you warm.
3 – Stick your name in big letters on you somewhere!
4 – Try wetting the top you plan to use for the race and running in it in advance, you may look silly when you try it but believe me you will thank me on this one more than any of the others!
5 – Try to choose a route that doesn’t loop back on its self.
Friday 14 May 2010
Progress - fundraising & marathon (no)training
Things have been moving a bit this week in regards to our fundraising.
Louise has distributed an information about our Kili adventure to all our colleagues at work plus some other external parties and we are pleased that our funds are now up to £210 plus some cash and plenty of copper coins in a special jar on Louise's desk! Many thanks to all of you contributing, your help is very much appreciated. And please be prepared for my daily asking you: Do you have any change? (This will be our mantra now :))
As for the other preparations, those are not slightly in the shadow of the coming marathon in seven and half days. The weather is getting suspiciously warm, I only hope that next Sunday in Edinburgh will be overcast with a slight wind and possibly occasional shower too just to refresh us and kick us to hurry into the finish.
I've done a couple of runs this week to remind my legs what they are expect to do next Sunday and managed one (two if I count last Sunday) strength workout (which is not brilliant but better than nothing) plus the regular games of squash and badminton. Pleased to announce no new injuries although my back is not the happiest lot and knees are creaking like an old wooden floor. I can feel the motivation for more exercise will falter next week due to my last minute pre-exam panic but will do my best to do at least the same amount as this week (and eat no mini Eggs...)
Louise has distributed an information about our Kili adventure to all our colleagues at work plus some other external parties and we are pleased that our funds are now up to £210 plus some cash and plenty of copper coins in a special jar on Louise's desk! Many thanks to all of you contributing, your help is very much appreciated. And please be prepared for my daily asking you: Do you have any change? (This will be our mantra now :))
As for the other preparations, those are not slightly in the shadow of the coming marathon in seven and half days. The weather is getting suspiciously warm, I only hope that next Sunday in Edinburgh will be overcast with a slight wind and possibly occasional shower too just to refresh us and kick us to hurry into the finish.
I've done a couple of runs this week to remind my legs what they are expect to do next Sunday and managed one (two if I count last Sunday) strength workout (which is not brilliant but better than nothing) plus the regular games of squash and badminton. Pleased to announce no new injuries although my back is not the happiest lot and knees are creaking like an old wooden floor. I can feel the motivation for more exercise will falter next week due to my last minute pre-exam panic but will do my best to do at least the same amount as this week (and eat no mini Eggs...)
Wednesday 12 May 2010
Edinburgh and ageing
It's been a couple of weeks since I wrote my last blog, in that time I have now turned 37 and also managed a brief holiday to the Lake District.
As part of my midlife crisis I registered to do the Edinburgh marathon (again I was sitting in a bar when I thought this was a good idea). As some background a group of 6 people that I work with registered for and completed the Coventry half marathon last year and this seemed like a good way for me to get a good level of fitness for Kili, the training had been going quite well for the half marathon and I had also always wanted to run a marathon (not that I am overly fit, I just wanted to be able to say to people when I am older and potentially grosssly overweight and unfit looking that I had once managed to run a marathon) so registering seemed like a good idea. Shortly after registering for the marathon (and 2 months before the half marathon) I got injured and couldn't run, I was still ok to play badminton and squash so thought I would be ok to just run the marathon with some strapping on my knee, unfortunately this aggravated it further and I couldn't train properly for the marathon until the end of January.
Since then though training has gone quite well and here I am now with a couple of weeks till Edinburgh and I am up to running 16 miles, only 10.2 miles left after that to walk then....
My kit situation has improved though! I purchased a 140 Litre North Face Base Camp Duffle bag which is big enough for me to fit in (probably, I didn't try, yet.......). Also bought a new pair of socks that are thinner than the other ones for general use, unfortunately they are still quite warm even in the British weather so I need to find a very thin pair. Still not sure of what to do with my boots......
In the company I work we have a birthday club with 8 members where for each birthday the other 7 people have to make a gift for the person whose birthday it is. With a marathon coming up in 18 days I got a huge birthday cake, some muffins, some coffee buns and some cornflake cakes, thanks everyone for your consideration for my health and fitness. I am working my way through these cakes though, perhaps the extra layer of fat will help keep me warm on the summit of Kilimanjaro.......
As part of my midlife crisis I registered to do the Edinburgh marathon (again I was sitting in a bar when I thought this was a good idea). As some background a group of 6 people that I work with registered for and completed the Coventry half marathon last year and this seemed like a good way for me to get a good level of fitness for Kili, the training had been going quite well for the half marathon and I had also always wanted to run a marathon (not that I am overly fit, I just wanted to be able to say to people when I am older and potentially grosssly overweight and unfit looking that I had once managed to run a marathon) so registering seemed like a good idea. Shortly after registering for the marathon (and 2 months before the half marathon) I got injured and couldn't run, I was still ok to play badminton and squash so thought I would be ok to just run the marathon with some strapping on my knee, unfortunately this aggravated it further and I couldn't train properly for the marathon until the end of January.
Since then though training has gone quite well and here I am now with a couple of weeks till Edinburgh and I am up to running 16 miles, only 10.2 miles left after that to walk then....
My kit situation has improved though! I purchased a 140 Litre North Face Base Camp Duffle bag which is big enough for me to fit in (probably, I didn't try, yet.......). Also bought a new pair of socks that are thinner than the other ones for general use, unfortunately they are still quite warm even in the British weather so I need to find a very thin pair. Still not sure of what to do with my boots......
In the company I work we have a birthday club with 8 members where for each birthday the other 7 people have to make a gift for the person whose birthday it is. With a marathon coming up in 18 days I got a huge birthday cake, some muffins, some coffee buns and some cornflake cakes, thanks everyone for your consideration for my health and fitness. I am working my way through these cakes though, perhaps the extra layer of fat will help keep me warm on the summit of Kilimanjaro.......
Saturday 8 May 2010
How fit you think you are?
That's a question I've been asking myself for last few weeks/months. It started to pop into my head after a small walk in Malvern Hills we made in February this year. With all the running, playing squash and occasional swimming, I would have expected to be fairly fit, but this trip showed me differently. I didn't even dare to think about comparing this with Kilimanjaro and what it's going to feel like there if one of these small hills made me puffing like an asthmatic oldie.
So what do I do now?
First, survive the marathon. It's in 2 weeks' time and requires most of my (and Paul's too as this is his first one!) attention now. It is also a painful reminder that the training wasn't going as well as it could have with bad weather (snow & ice in January), persistent cold (beginning of March) and various knees/hips/back injuries annoying my life. My current preparations are therefore mainly the mental ones (visualising the very cold pint of beer at some point after crossing the finish line!)
Then, start hiking properly. We've already planned a few hiking trips but is that going to be enough? Am I going to be strong enough? It's not as simple as I refuse to join the gym (again), which seems to be a major budget enemy. The memories of waiting for the machines (sometimes still sweaty from the previous user), cancelled classes when I was really looking forward to attend them and sometimes not even being able to get a free locker are not encouraging either. So how do I make my body stronger and fitter?
I tried Wii Fit. It's a good laugh and I was very entertained and motivated until the very cute balance board told me my fitness age was 56!!! Still I will give it another chance to change its mind :).
However, the answer to my fitness question is: Self Challenge. It's a fitness program developed by a women's magazine Self (www.self.com) which provides a structured fitness plan including workout routines, healthy recipes, food & workout diary and general fitness information. It also gives you options to lose weight (not really interested in this), get stronger (yay, need that for Kili) or get toned (yay, need that for Zazibar)and based on that you personalise your program. And why I am telling you this? Because I hope you will nag me and ask me about the progress as that's the only way I will be able to stick to a program like that... :-D
Fingers crossed, I am going to do my first workout...!
So what do I do now?
First, survive the marathon. It's in 2 weeks' time and requires most of my (and Paul's too as this is his first one!) attention now. It is also a painful reminder that the training wasn't going as well as it could have with bad weather (snow & ice in January), persistent cold (beginning of March) and various knees/hips/back injuries annoying my life. My current preparations are therefore mainly the mental ones (visualising the very cold pint of beer at some point after crossing the finish line!)
Then, start hiking properly. We've already planned a few hiking trips but is that going to be enough? Am I going to be strong enough? It's not as simple as I refuse to join the gym (again), which seems to be a major budget enemy. The memories of waiting for the machines (sometimes still sweaty from the previous user), cancelled classes when I was really looking forward to attend them and sometimes not even being able to get a free locker are not encouraging either. So how do I make my body stronger and fitter?
I tried Wii Fit. It's a good laugh and I was very entertained and motivated until the very cute balance board told me my fitness age was 56!!! Still I will give it another chance to change its mind :).
However, the answer to my fitness question is: Self Challenge. It's a fitness program developed by a women's magazine Self (www.self.com) which provides a structured fitness plan including workout routines, healthy recipes, food & workout diary and general fitness information. It also gives you options to lose weight (not really interested in this), get stronger (yay, need that for Kili) or get toned (yay, need that for Zazibar)and based on that you personalise your program. And why I am telling you this? Because I hope you will nag me and ask me about the progress as that's the only way I will be able to stick to a program like that... :-D
Fingers crossed, I am going to do my first workout...!
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