MrsB

Haven’t written a Run for Fun post since 1st of October when it was all about mixing up the training in preparation for the two half marathons I ran that month. Since then I’ve pretty much stayed with the same training schedule – CrossFit twice a week, 10k run on Wednesdays or Thursdays, and a long run (22-25km) on a Saturdays or Sundays. I haven’t done any hill repeats since my last half marathon though – CrossFit gives my muscles a good enough workout that I don’t feel the need to go mad on the hills at the moment!

My long runs have been to Richmond Park lately. I finally figured out how to run there without getting lost :) The quickest way is through Wimbledon Common but at this time of the year the common is very muddy so I’ve been taking the road around it which makes the loop a bit over 22km long – perfect for a weekend run.

I love long runs because they make you think about running, they make you preservere, they make you patient and they make you cherish how far you have come in the whole running journey.

The more I do it and the more distance I cover, the more I am seeing how running is just as good for my mind as it is for my body. [...]

I’m back on my feet now and able to eat again. I went for a run yesterday after 4 days off and the legs were tight (especially shins for some weird reason – I never usually have trouble with my shins) but loosened up after about 5km and in the end I did 7.63km in 40 minutes. Not too bad for a lunchtime run.

This morning’s CrossFit was fab. I had hoped for burpees and box jumps (instead of lifting weights) but I got rope climbs and slam balls. Fine by me! I lost a bit of skin from my right hand from the rope but did my 5 rounds of 400m run, 2 rope climbs and 12 slam balls in 17 minutes and 52 seconds. I don’t know whether that’s any good, but my heart was seriously thumping by the end of it so I consider it a success.

I actually told the coach that I love those kinds of workouts the best and could do without all the heavy weightlifting – I hope I don’t get dis-membershipped for saying that! [...]

One week in October my Twitter feed was buzzing from anticipation of letters from the organisers of the 2013 Virgin London Marathon. Some people had received their yeses, some had received their nos, some were still waiting, some planned to leave work early to get home quicker to see what the answer was.

Having applied for a place as well, I joined in the excitement and called my mother and asked her to read out loud the text of the letter. Her English is not the clearest but I only had to understand one word: unsuccessful.

Ughh… not a good feeling. When I got home it only got worse though, the letter said “SORRY! YOU have been unsuccessful at… ” I knew what I read but I heard it as “Sorry, YOU are a looser, everyone else got a place!” (they should not have capitalised that YOU and I would have been fine :).

By the following day I had mostly calmed down, I knew that a lot of people apply for the ballot places. I had also signed up with a couple of charities so I still had hope. [...]

MrB and I ran our 3rd Run to the Beat half marathon this morning. Almost 4 years ago he signed me up for the 2010 race when I was strongly in the mindset of ‘I cannot run’ and in pure fear of dying in front of a large audience, I started training and the rest is history!

First RTTB was freezing, second RTTB was HOT, third one today was freezing again. No amount of hopping in one place for 40 minutes before the start can keep your body warm so the legs felt totally stiff from the get go. I actually appreciated that it was really crowded in the beginning – it meant that I was forced to run slowly. I wish I could say that I warmed up and sped up but after a few kms but that didn’t happen. I did increase my speed a little every km from about 5km onwards, but the legs never felt loose. [...]

On Sunday I ran the Royal Parks Half marathon here in London. MrB didn’t get a place so I hired him as my Bag Man for the day :) I figured that if I could keep my hoodie on for as long as possible before the race then I wouldn’t get cold waiting at the start line and would hopefully not finish with blue lips like I have before when races are in September/October.

Sunday’s weather was absolutely gorgeous though, with bright sunshine by 9am so I let my Bag Man go to a café around 9 and just hopped in the starting area until the start of the race at 9:30 – didn’t feel cold at all.

The game plan was to go for 1 hour and 48 minutes. My previous PB for a half marathon was a 1:50:11 for Run to the Beat in 2011, so I just pulled that 1:48 out of the hat and ‘ran’ with it. I had remembered what my pace was supposed to be and my time for 5km, 10km and 15km in order to hit that target. This was not going to be a Fun Run, I meant Business! [...]

Running has been a lot of fun in September. Instead of my usual Wednesday and Saturday morning 10-15km runs I have mixed up the game a bit – I have run in the evenings, I have done some short and fast runs, I have done several 10km runs with a few hill repeats in the middle and I have done 3 long runs of 20-21.5km. [...]

Last Saturday as I was running, two little girls (5ish and 8ish) saw me and the younger said:”Why is she running??” The older one replied: “She’s trying to lose weight, that’s why!” … In the next few days that followed I have had two people tell me that they don’t understand why I exercise because [...]

As you can probably tell from the change of my post subjects in the last 12 months from mostly parenting stuff to mostly health and fitness stuff – I’m having a midlife crisis. It’s the good kind of midlife crisis though :), the kind that urges me to make positive changes in my life and [...]

I blogged about Home Run London several months ago already but although I loved the idea of running half way home after work while someone else carries my bag, I was hesitant to sign up because joining one of the groups would mean getting home at 7:30 at night i.e. after the kids are in [...]

I thoroughly took advantage of my long summer holiday and ran a whopping 201km in August.  As of tomorrow I’ll be back at work, and since I cannot neither get up at 5am to run nor am I brave enough to run in the dark after work, I’ll be going back to running on Wednesdays [...]

On previous summer holidays in Estonia I’ve always run in the woods, but this time I wanted to do longer distances and I hit the streets – running on the streets makes the kilometres fly by a lot faster. In my mom’s little seaside town, there aren’t any other runners on the streets, so as [...]

In the 4 weeks that we spent in Estonia, I ran a total of 166 km. Considering that I usually run around 100-130km a month, it’s quite a good number :)

Even though I have been running for 3 years now (I started running because MrB signed me up for it in 2010 and I had to take up running as not to die in front of a large audience), I am still constantly learning new things about running…

I’m at home with the boys so we walk a lot every day, but I definitely miss my long Wednesday runs. And I miss having a bit of energy in the evenings to do some strength work – I’m amazingly tired every evening from just mothering and once the boys are in bed after 8 I don’t. do. a single. thing. any. more.

Holidays from work and just being able to hang out with them children of mine is of course great in many ways, but not having a clear structure to every day makes me struggle with exercise and eating a lot. …

Yesterday morning I took part of the British 10k run for the first time. It rained when I got to Embankment to meet the rest of the charity team I was running for, it stopped raining when we handed in our bags and started running and then half-way through the race it BUCKETED DOWN. Lovely English summer, what can I say :) …

The wounds from last Wednesday’s bloody 10km run are thankfully all superficial and healing nicely.

On Saturday I went running with MrB for a change. He needed to go to the city to collect his bike from his office and I tagged along, running with him to Elephant and Castle and then a little bit back before hopping on the tube. …