Better late than never

It hasn't really taken me over two weeks to finish the New York half marathon - I have merely been neglecting the blog, for reasons that will become clear

The New York race was fantastic. As usual, the city was very kind to me, giving me lots of sunshine and no rain on race day. Admittedly it was cold, and my mistake was not to wear enough clothing for the race (I think I have only just managed to repair my chapped knees in the last couple of days) but apart from that, everything went really well.

I managed to knock 4 minutes off last year's time, even including a toilet stop, and feel really confident again about my ability to progress in my running. I know Berlin is a long way off, but it's important to me at my age to not feel like it's all downhill and for that, I am really pleased with my NYC half time.

Since the race though, things have not been so rosy. I managed to run once on the Wednesday after the race, but on the Thursday I pulled a muscle in the top of my foot going downstairs (the shame). I've done this before but on the other foot and I know that rest is the answer, so I just took a week off and tried to stay off the foot as much as possible. On top of that, my work decided it would be a good idea to make me redundant, which proved a fairly time-consuming distraction from foot injuries and running.

It's been a tense time, with lots of downs and very few ups, and there is still a whole mess to sort out and God knows how it will be sorted. However, there are positives that I am trying to take from the situation.

I've decided to go freelance and work from home. This should give me much greater flexibility with my running and mean that it is easier to fit in training, as I won't have to be commuting into London every day. I'll miss the long runs home, but there is nothing to stop me finding another route nearer the time, and it will be two hours of my life I will get back on a daily basis
Secondly, I think it is going to have a really good effect on my weight. I've already lost four pounds on the stress diet, but working from home has already meant lots of healthy lunches and no temptation from the office cake and biscuit mountain. So that should also have a positive contributionn to my marathon training

My first redundancy run, however, has not worked out so well. I headed out last night around 5.30, after closing the computer down for the day. I was feeling quite stressed by the events of the day, and thought a run would clear my head. By 5.37 I was lying flat on my back about half a mile from home, wondering where my glasses had landed and worried that I had actually lost part of my head, rather than cleared it.

I'm still not sure what happened, whether I tripped over myself or a paving stone, but all of a sudden I was conscious I was heading towards the floor. More importantly, I could see a waist level brick wall heading towards my face, as I hurtled towards someone's front garden wall. My first reaction was to protect my face (vanity = king of the emotions) and somehow managed to twist myself round in a corkscrew fashion so I landed on the wall with the length of my left side. I then ricocheted back off the wall and rolled onto the ground in a Starsky and Hutch style, glasses flying off my face in god knows what direction.

Of course, this had to happen on a main road. My vanity kicked in immediately and I got straight up, picking up my glasses and (pathetically) stopping my GPS. I let out a very loud 'ow' and looked down to see blood pouring out of about 5 points on my left hand. My left ear felt like it had been sliced in half, and my left shoulder was protesting fairly loudly as well. So I slouched off towards home, feeling embarrassed, agonised and generally chastened by the whole experience.

Remarkably, I have only a mild graze on my right knee and elbow, and the left knee and elbow are intact. However, there is not much left of my little finger on my left hand apart from blood and scabs. I somehow have managed to cheese grate the inside of my ear, leaving the outside intact (don't ask, I'm never going to figure that one out). I have also cheese grated the back of my left shoulder, and have a big hole in the front of the same shoulder that, bizarrely, resembles a bullet hole.

Hell, maybe that's it, maybe I was shot and that's why I went down! Yes - that's my story and I am sticking with it...

LON

motivation

I'm now a week away from starting the marathon training plan proper - and planning to enjoy the last week of relative freedom. I'm surprised how psyched out I am by the impending training schedule. I'd managed a 4 day per week training schedule for a half marathon earlier this year, but for some reason the prospect of 4-5 days a week, with much more mileage, is daunting. Perhaps it's because I remember how much time the half marathon training took up, and I know the full marathon will take up more. Perhaps it's because I'm going to be training through the warmest months of the year. Or perhaps I'm just a big wuss. In any case, the race itself is far less terrifying than the 15 weeks preceding it.

Still the schedule is printed and ready to go on the fridge door. I've broken it down into sections with interim goals so that it is more like 4 short training schedules than one long single schedule. Hopefully this strategy will work.

In the meantime, this week will be a social whirl so I can fit in as many nights out and meet-ups as possible before I start to withdraw from polite society in order to do '5 miles, steady'

first day

This is my first day of blogging but it's not a day for jogging. A typical British summer day, with grey skies and the odd clap of thunder, I'm nursing a gardening-induced hamstring strain so am giving the legs a rest for a couple of days while the weather dries out. I'm going to use the time to get used to writing this blog and establish how this whole thing works. I've got just under two weeks until the marathon training starts properly so until then, any readers out there will have to make do with minutiae of London life and general running anecdotes.