Sainsbury Anniversary Games

Thursday Night Running and a trip to London

A busy week of sports related outings which have been really fun. First, I was off to my new Thursday evening running club without my brb (best running buddy) Rebecca and also another fellow Commando Runner, Darren, was injured so he wouldn’t be there either. Now it is a strange thing but I can be very happy in my own company even in the middle of a crowd and I quite enjoy being in that little bubble. I will happily make asides and even a bit of conversation - once I’ve got my breathing under control! However, I find that until that point any chatting is really hard work. Unless you are with someone who is familiar with your pattern I worry that people might think you are being stand offish. If I try to chat I can’t keep up the pace and start to fall back even further.
What a dilemma!

Maps make everything look nice and flat!

So it was the back of the field for me on Thursday evening whilst I tried to cope with the heat and getting my breathing under control. We were going to do some hill work and stair climbing. Wonderful if we were not in the middle of, for the UK, a heatwave. 

We had a warm up run to the area we would be using for the hill work and then we would be doing two loops taking in an uphill and downhill section. I found it very hard on the first one as the trainer was talking to me and on the second one the other trainer was talking to me and I desperately wanted to break into a walk but had to resist.

The hill section over we travelled down until we got to the station where there was a steep set of pedestrian stairs with a slope down which enabled us to use for looping round. The idea was to get up the stairs treading on each step (not taking giant leaps as some were!) then running down the slope and back round to the stairs again. I think I managed three sets having found my pace and rhythm at last. Then it was time to head home and I really was glad to get back and cool down with some stretching.

Sainsbury Anniversary Games
Horse Guards Parade

Summer athletics

This is a mini-games held to commemorate the Olympics that were held in London in 2012. We arrived on a scorching hot Sunday after travelling up by train from Colchester to Stratford (terminating here instead of Liverpool Street for some ungiven reason). We then got onto the Jubilee Line and travelled to Westminster and from there we could walk to the venue.

There were lots of tourists which made walking a painfully slow procedure and we stopped in the narrowest Tesco Express ever to get ourselves a picnic lunch to take in with us. Then we reached Trafalgar Square and the Mall where once through we were able to queue to have our bags checked. There was a mad moment where people began to swallow down drinks believing that you couldn’t take them in. Some moaned that we ought to have been warned. The man checking my bag said you were allowed to bring in 500mls so thankfully the bottle of water I had was not taken away. Most of the drinks people were draining would have been allowed but such is the nature of panic in a crowd that when you see one person doing something most people blindly follow. 

Once in we were able to get a lovely Pimms at the bar and take it to our seats where we took in our surroundings and tucked into our lunch.

The meeting would cover high jump, long jump, shot-put, 100m races including hurdling and pole-vaulting. We were able to see the action at the other end of the track on a large screen and to watch interviews and watch the audience take part in kiss me quick when caught on camera. There were also people ‘shooting’ tee shirts into the stands for lucky people to catch.

The sun was incredibly hot on a day supposed to be getting cloudy with rain and we slavered on the suncream and drank lots of water - after the Pimms of course.

I really enjoyed watching the athletes and para-athletes and particularly enjoyed the high jump. 

It was a real treat to see all the competitors and how fit and strong they are. The dedication it must take to become an athlete makes me proud of them and inspires me to keep on doing my own little bit to keep these old bones in shape. I was lucky enough to have experienced all the track events we saw at this meeting when I was at school and I only hope that every child gets an opportunity to try athletics and enjoy them too.

Home Run

Shopping, LWFitness4All and Monday evening MI H3 on Mersea Island

Was it something I said? Reports of thousands of visitors to my last post have shown up somewhere but are, sadly, greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless it has made me think about words and phrases that might lead to more interest than intended!

• Excessive shopping
• An Uphill distance training session
• Running (well almost), swimming (definitely not) and BBQ (of course)
• Memorable quotes of the evening

Excessive Shopping

This week I was lucky enough to visit the Lululemon showroom in Chelsea where my daughter and I were made very welcome and I was able to choose some gorgeous new running clothes.

In my bag: running socks, underwunder cropped pants
and matching energy bra and om racerback tank

I am a great fan of Lululemon sports clothes as they are really well made and last for years. As a lover of both yoga and running their clothes perfectly cross both disciplines. Be warned though - they are horrendously expensive even if they will probably last you your entire lifetime. Here is part of their manifesto printed on their bags:

I definitely relate to the first message that
stress is related to 99% of all illness

I had planned and saved to treat myself after the Colchester Half Marathon. As I wasn't able to get one of the items I had wanted I continued to save each week and decided to get something if I completed the Round The Island Race and as a lover of Tiffany Blue this is what I chose:

Some new Asics and a Nike tee shirt

I am planning to wear my new trainers and top at the Ekiden Relay Race at Woodbridge School in Ipswich on Sunday. I'm running 5k in team "Love" for The Commando Runners and it looks as if it will be really good fun. Lots of good spirited competitiveness already in the banter on Facebook!

An Uphill Distance Training Session

I went along on Thursday evening for my second outing with this, new to me, group at LWFitness4All and we worked on distance combined with loopbacks. As well as information about what we would be working on there was a link to this map:

It looked innocent enough
I only glanced at it and thought the distance would be
good for me

A quick lesson in not taking things at face value as the mileage seemed fine but, of course, it did not take into account how hilly it would be. I really did not think I would last the course but quickly found that stopping and waiting instead of looping back was the wrong thing to do. I need to keep my momentum going and once I realised that I found it, slightly, easier. Another good workout with them and they are such a lovely bunch of people.

Monday evening Mersea Island Hash House Harriers run/swim and BBQ

Hashers waiting for the start looking just as
bewildered as they do when we are finally off

Really a special Hash for me as it was here on my Island home and I was especially pleased that it would finish with a BBQ on the beach with swimming for those who wanted to.

It was to be a fairly short hash but actually turned out to be the usual five miles or thereabouts. The route took us along the back of the 'sugarplum' beach huts and off into Waldegraves caravan park. I'm not sure what the happy campers made of their quiet evening suddenly being invaded by a large group of runners yelling 'on one' at the top of their voices. Ah, the quiet of the countryside in summer!

Rows of pretty pastel coloured beach huts and some
pretty colourful runners too

The trail was not easy to find and I found myself being ticked off for not shouting out 'on one' when I found the looked for pile of sawdust - truth is that I did shout but my voice is just not loud enough!

We ran passed some fishermen at a quiet pool - still yelling at the top of our voices - all I can say in our defence is that we are just so full of enthusiasm. Then we ran along to a checkpoint where the 'Hare' said how wonderful it was that so many had turned up and he was going to leave us and had given a map to someone just in case.

Then we were off through some pretty difficult terrain and I must admit I thought we were being led the wrong way and started moaning that we must have been trespassing and the route was bound to have been taking us in another direction back to the sea wall. 

You can see what I mean - it was virtually impossible
to run and the surface was ploughed ground

Eventually we got to the road and somebody kindly helped me jump the ditch and we headed along until there was a sawdust checkpoint confirming that I was totally out of order blaming someone for leading us the wrong way but I continued in the same vein as we followed the trail across another difficult field. I obviously don't learn!

Be afraid, be very afraid!
My childhood nightmare - the ground opening up and swallowing me.

We finally got back onto the road and we were all itching and scratched and really hot and sweaty - ripe meat for swarms of Mersea Midges which suddenly appeared from nowhere to eat us alive.

Help!

We weren't finished yet as we still had quite a bit of trail to find and some more difficult ground to cover.

Yep totally out of control and all over the road
it must be a group of Hash House Harriers

The call for 'Home' came and we were soon settling down on the beach for swimming, chatting and waiting for our BBQ.

Time for some snaps

The confessions of mass caterers
I'll be able to tell if you drop my burger in the sand!

Lots of runners and walkers braved the sea:

Some were braver than others
Becci getting some encouragement you can 
watch a video of her swimming adventures here

How romantic is that - a pontoon just made for two
er not three - queue Jaws music!

The MIH3 had hired The Lions Beach Hut which was
perfect

The food was good - especially the vegetarian sausage rolls

Oh the anticipation - and well worth it
Sue's Prosecco was delicious

The MI H3 are a great bunch and I love that we have walkers as well as runners. I think you can see they were having a relaxing time:

Cheers me dears!

A big thank you to all the girls who generously brought 'extras' along and shared them with us. (Ah! an example of where you need to think about what you say - not changing it though!).

Sue with her wonderful 'Mary Poppins' enormous picnic basket
filled with scrumptious treats and lashings of lemonade - oops slipping into Famous Five now!

Memorable quotes of the evening

• "They gave me a joke book" (followed by some terrible examples)
• "Do you know Chris - he's a member of Colchester Harriers" - "What's his surname" - "Chris, oh I can't remember his last name - he lives in Tiptree" (with a population of over 7,000 and one of the contenders for the largest village in Essex)
• "We're definitely lost" (nope)
• "We're definitely going the wrong way" (um, no)
• "The farmer will let the cows out to get us in a minute" (arghhh!)
• "I saw that too" (not saying what that was about;-))
• "I won't lie, it is not warm" (about whether the sea was cold)
• "Olive anyone" (see below)

"NO"

• "They're stuffed" (again I'm not commenting)

Absolutely brilliant evening - why are you still sitting there - come and join us on a hash!