18 days to go!

It's coming so fast now, when I first won the prize it was a huge 10mths away, people kept asking if I was going soon, or had I done it yet ... I'm not sure that most of those people had any concept of training and running for a marathon! But that 10mths has gone so quickly, but at the same time so slowly, I had a lot to do to build myself up to be ready ... and I feel ready!

Not a whole lot going on around here, its school holidays which doesn't help my eating ... at all. Self control would be a good thing, I mean, I didn't have to get a burger and fries at McDonalds yesterday, I know full well that a low pointed wrap and if I really felt like a treat, a smoothie ... would have been fine - but no I went for the fat, calorie filled burger and fries. Although I've lost a weight, I still have a long long way to go to changing habits forever and keeping it off.

My runs have been good this week, I am loving the Forerunner ... definitely no regrets making that investment. So far I haven't found any problems with it at all. I'd read up on it before I got it (the 405) and I know one of the complaints was only three options on the screen - I've set it up so my "first" screen has the time taken, current pace and distance. I've then got the "second" screen set up with two options - overall pace and current lap pace, I have it set to medium scrolling and it works perfectly. Another complaint seemed to be the sensitive or awkward Bezzel, well, once its all set up, it is easy to lock it, even though that is locked the start/stop buttons aren't - so it is easy to start/stop the watch, and then when you are completely finished, switch the bezzel back on, I'm not sure of any reason why you would need it unlocked while you were running (then again, I haven't gone into the training details of the watch, so maybe you need it then). So far I have no complaints whatsoever :)

Running this week -

Tuesday - 8km
I started off slow to test how my legs felt and then just went with how I felt, did a great run with negative splits.

Wednesday - 10km
I haven't run 10km for a while, for some reason that distance doesn't come in the training programme very often. I've been thinking for a while that I could probably run 10km in under 55min now ... so yesterday I decided to try it :) Another awesome paced out run (I amaze myself! LOL), I won't type out the splits, but they went from 5:40ish down to the last couple being 5:16, 5:12 ... first 5k was 28min, second 5k was 26:20 - making a 54:20 10km ... and it wasn't even "that" hard.

Absolutely unbelieveable to think that March last year I ran my first 10km and it took me 1:12 ... I'm still incredibly proud of that race and that time, I never thought I'd ever run that far and it was an absolute buzz. But I'm amazed how far I've come, and I've said it before so many times ... not just me, but how the human body can be trained to do it!

I had to drop off the car to be serviced and fixed this morning so I mapped out 8km from there and ran home (being a runner is quite handy sometimes! LOL) - I wanted to try a 5:40 pace to see how I feel, I'm sort of thinking of aiming for that at Saturday's half marathon. If I can do it, it will be under two hours, which I'm not really set on doing, it was my next goal when I came back from London, so I'm not too concerned if I can't do it. My plan is to run it pretty easy to start, if 5:40 feels easy, then that is what I will run, if it's feeling too hard, I will slow down. So today I managed to keep at 5:37/km the whole 8k, and felt pretty good ... still not sure whether I will feel good after 21km at that speed though - I'll find out in a couple of days! The biggest thing that will stop me is the route, it is called "The Great Forest Run" because it is run through forest, no roads, and quite a bit of sand ... so word is is that it is a slower course because it is harder to run on.

Deirdre is running her marathon that day, so I'll be there to cheer her off at the start and then will probably run back and run the last couple of ks with her to the end.

I was going to bring Cameron with me, plus the girls because David is working. They have a kids 5km race which Charlotte would probably like to do and Cameron was going to run it with her. But David just told me that Cameron has soccer practice on Saturday morning, *bad words* typical, middle weekend of the holidays - do they not think we might want to do family things? Grrrrrrr ... and its try outs for 1st/2nd 11 at college so he can't really miss it. Deirdre's family will be there so the girls should be okay to tag along with them, but annoying when I had it all worked out!

I think thats all the rambling I have today! Off to hang out washing and tidy up our family room ... having no car means we are stuck at home with just tidying up to do ;)