Hello!  Jeez two blog posts in a week.  Who even am I … I’m basically a writer now right?!

First, dear Lord isn’t this weather FREEZING.  What is going on!!  I know it’s January blah blah but still.  I’m sure it’s not this miserable always in January … I can’t bear it.  Luckily I’ve managed to escape the grind – like I said in my last post, this year is all about sport and travel, so I’ve been busy on Skyscanner and AirBnB and I’ve BOOKED MYSELF UP – I’m going to Malta for a long weekend in a couple weeks and it should be 17-20*C there, then Susan and I are doing a self-arranged sports trip to Cape Verde in March.  We plan on sea swimming every morning, long runs/walks, surf school, free diving (for her, I am a creature of the land), maybe a cycle trip or two around the island … and there it should be … wait for it … 25-30*C!!!!!!  YAAAAASSSSSSSSSS.  I cannot wait!  And when we get back daylight savings will have kicked in so it’ll almost – ALMOST – be summer.  Woop!

In addition to the battering my credit card took booking Cape Verde and the additional swim camp in Rimini I mentioned in the last blog (Malta has fortunately been booked for ages), I also got busy booking events.  I’m doing Race to the Stones in July (so is Susan) and I think that now is the time to focus.  Obviously I’ve been building up the running week by week anyway and I’m up to doing about an hour three times a week, but now is the time to ramp it up properly.   I’m still going to stick to the three/four runs a week for now but I’m splitting them up into three types of session:  (1) intervals; (2) fartlek/mixed with strength exercises; and (3) steady state long runs.  I’m going to try and do two runs on consecutive days as well so that I can get used to that, so that’s going to be a THING this week – I tried it last week with very short sessions and all was well, so fingers crossed it’s the same with longer sessions.  I’ll just have to see how it goes really and keep a beady little eye on it.  I’m sure it’ll be fine #fingerscrossed.

Anyway, as well as the sessions, I wanted to build in a focus session each month until RttS, so I’ve booked the following:

• March:  Fulham 10K
• April:  Battersea 10K
• May:  Hackney Half
• June:  Mild Mustard swim/run (ermergerd – like a mini-Ötillö!! But a far more rational 10K all up)

In addition to that I have the Rimini swim camp first week of June, so I think the blend of swimming and running should keep me busy but not crazy over-focused on running.  Here’s hoping!

I kickstarted my 2018 races with a 5K today – the Olympic Park runthrough 5K.  I was drawn to it because it was at the Olympic Park which I thought was cool, but I didn’t really know what to expect as I haven’t done a runthrough event before.  I’d definitely recommend them!  It was quite small – they keep all their events to 500 entrants as far as I can see – and it was soooo well-marshalled, probably one of the best marshalled races I’ve done.  The course was kind of cool because it was through the Olympic park but it wasn’t the most scenic race since it’s pretty much a concrete jungle.  However the really fun thing about their races is that you can choose on the day whether to do a 5K or 10K – you don’t decide in advance, you decide in the event itself how you feel.  I knew I was only going to do a 5K because although I have been running 10k at a time, it hasn’t been under race circumstances and it’s been broken up into intervals etc so I thought the shorter race was a far more sensible idea.  I felt incredibly strong (partly because I was extremely slow hahahah) though and I probably could have done the 10k but I’m glad I didn’t push it.  And the best bit – you get a home made cookie/muffin thing at the end which was DELICIOUS! And home made, OMG.  Can you imagine?!  So cute.

Runthrough also is the organiser for the Battersea event I’m doing in April and I’ll be very happy to do an event with them again – I’d 100% recommend them.  As long as they keep bribing me with cookies I’ll keep turning up!

xx