I haven’t said a great deal about it, but I started running a couple of months ago. It was a little mortifying at first, as I’m a good old weight & very unfit and lumbering around in a red faced, boob bumping manner was not entirely something to brag about. To be honest, I really thought I was too unfit to run, just too heavy and inappropriately shaped to be able to do it. The humiliation of knowing my two big girls were already managing to do it fairly easily was not entirely something I wanted to put myself up against. To be honest, I can’t entirely think what got me out of the door the first day, or why I went. I looked up the Couch 25K regime and it didn’t seem impossible, so I must have decided to give it a go.
C25K starts off with walk a minute and a half, run a minute. I decided to do walk a minute, run a minute if I could and surprised myself by managing that for a reasonable amount of time on a 2 mile loop. It was hard though and I was watching the clock for the end of the minute. And then suddenly, after a few runs, fast that I thought it could happen, I wasn’t. And then I could run for a minute & a half and even, sometimes, for 2 minutes.
Last week I excelled myself by running up a hill (not things we get round here!) on a Dartmoor lane and actually running for 4 minutes down one.
I’ve even lost 5lbs and I have to admit, better leg muscles are making for improved enjoyment all round 😆
Fran and Maddy and I have signed up to do Race For Life on July 3rd. If I’m truly honest, raising money isn’t my prime goal, the thought of training for something and achieving it is and I’m really looking forward to doing something for my girls. But we lost Great Gran to cancer a few years ago, my Step MIL is a breast cancer survivor and my aunt started chemo yesterday for the same, the first time it has touched my immediate family. Four children my girls know and care for are motherless after a friend died of it a couple of years ago and they met two more, who are dear to people they love, who are also motherless for the same reason, only yesterday.
Knowing only too well how it feels to lose people you love and can hardly bear to go on without, were going to run for the joy of being alive, for Freddie, for Great Gran and Linda and Judy and L, V and LN and all the people who loved them, in honour of the fights and the memories.
If you want to sponsor us or come and cheer us on in Cambridge on July 3rd, we’d be only too grateful.
And I need to work out how to up my game from running most of 2 miles, to all of 3 miles, in a month. Gulp.
