London Marathon | Family Affairs and other matters

DIARY OF A MARATHON RUNNER

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Having asked my lovely friend to write about her experience and her training regime over the next eight weeks or so leading up to the marathon, here are her first thoughts on the matter:- Marathon training I should start by explaining who I am and how extraordinary it is that I am even thinking about writing a blog on marathon training let alone actually running one. I am a 40 year old mother of 4 girls who are 13, 12, 10 and 2 and I have spent my entire lifetime avoiding any serious physical exercise and by just doing the bare minimum to get by without being 25 stone. The closest I got to exercise was regularly drinking copious amounts of wine and dancing in a ridiculously embarrassing manner with my friends. Anyway that’s all changed. After having my youngest daughter and really not looking that great in a bikini having had 4 caesareans I realised I really should do something about it. So a friend suggested I join her and some other friends in the park one morning with her new trainer. The trainer being an ex-para who now made a living making middle-aged suburban housewives lie down in the mud in all weathers doing press ups, squats and burpies combined with huge amounts of running and sprinting. My first session didn’t go that well as I was wearing a grey cashmere jumper and yoga pants with 4 silver “Tiffany”bracelets up my arm. It’s not easy doing the “seal” crawl on the soaking wet muddy ground in December without getting your afore-mentioned jumper seriously muddy and then clogging up your bracelets with mud too. When I mentioned this to the ex-para he wasn’t exactly sympathetic. I also told him I hadn’t run since I had been at school and then I had been quite smart at avoiding doing it during PE too. He told me I would change. I didn’t believe him. So that was a just over a year ago. I have been training with him 2/3 times a week since then. I have lost a stone and a half and I am running the London Marathon in April.

SEA OF HUMANITY

Sunday, April 26, 2009

4 Comments

Don’t you just love the London Marathon? 36,000 runners all with their own story to tell. It makes me cry. So inspirational. We were there today. A group of us. To cheer on my friend. “It’s all your fault – write that in your bloody blog” she said to me yesterday. But you know what? [...]

"DEAR RUNNER"

Thursday, January 3, 2008

2 Comments

“Dear Runner, We regret that we have to advise you that your application to run in the 2008 Flora London Marathon has not been successful”. Thank f*ck for that. What was I thinking? Hardly even remember applying. Must have been homeless and delirious and swept up in all the emotion of the day. Great all [...]