Excuses

Hello Fudgey Friends,

Hope you have had a lovely weekend. We have had a fairly productive one.

Saturday
Yesterday we were up early & I wrapped my wee niece's birthday present, Mr Fudgey very kindly took it round to the post office. Mum and Dad Smith dropped in for coffee and to deliver a couple of parcels for us.
I had made another batch of plum chilli sauce for them to take away with them. Mum Smith served it with scallops & mussels & I hear it went down very well. In fact I am making another batch now & Mr Fudgey & I are going to have it with some pork fillet this evening. I also made another batch of my. homemade cereal bars, but this time I used cranberries instead of apricots & almond butter instead of peanut butter - they turned out great.
I then spent the afternoon doing housework, while Mr Fudgey was busy with the pc's & a few technical difficulties. An ENORMOUS Thank you to Paul for getting us up and running - very very much appreciated. Clumsy Fudgey then tripped on the hoover cable & came down hard on my knees - the right one taking most of the force & my right shoulder also hurting from trying to put my hands out to save myself. I really am a numpty sometimes. I spent the evening limping about being fed up with myself, though our lovely dinner of chicken & roasted vegetables did make me feel a bit better. I LOVE roasted veg....today I used red & white onion, chestnut mushrooms, courgette, red & green peppers, cherry tomatoes, garlic, a small tin of new potatoes, some extra virgin olive oil & of course my favourite Oil & Vinegar shop wild garlic mix. Chopped everything up & roasted in the oven for about 40 minutes. After dinner we watched a hilarious film called Zombieland.

Excuses
Do you ever find yourself making up excuses to yourself for why you can't do something? This is the frame of mind I went to bed in last night. 'I don't think I can do my long run tomorrow....my knee, shoulder and head hurt' I told myself. Then I realised 'Oh No I can't do my long run because I've left both pairs of my running shoes in my locker at the gym' But then I got into solution mode...wait & see how the knee etc feel in the morning, I could go up to the gym early & collect my shoes - in fact I could go in my kit put my shoes on & run back, or I could run wearing my non running trainers, it was a right battle between yes you can / no you can't parts of my brain.

Week 3 Run 4
I woke up this morning and just didn't want to run. I then also mistakenly thought it was an hour later than it actually was as we somehow thought the clocks changed this weekend...Doh. I hauled myself out of bed without even the energy to chat to hubby, pulled on my kit, ate one of my lovely cereal bars, put on my gorgeous new Garmin & headed out the door. I opted to try & run in my non running trainers. There is nothing wrong with these trainers - Nike Dart, it's my feet that are the issue - I'm a very severe over pronator so I have a pair of motion control shoes & a support shoe that I alternate for running - these help to balance my over pronation & prevent injury. This is a piece of Fudgey advice for all fellow runners out there - if you can, do get your feet & your gait assessed and get the appropriate shoes for you - it really does help. I'm a real girly girl & I would just buy things because they look nice or have pink bits :-) but when it comes to all my running kit I'm a a very sensible Fudgey.....though loads of it does have pink bits!
The run was awesome, the training plan had 80 minutes easy & I ran just over 81 minutes and managed 13.14km. This is my furthest run to date. I had set the garmin to autolap every km so was able to check my pacing which was pretty good today. When I got back home I uploaded all my garmin data to the garmin training centre....I am such I geek I love seeing my splits, calories burnt & my max speeds etc broken down over each km. I was also flying high from running 80 minutes with no stopping or walking at all - in fact I am positively looking forward to next weekends 90 minutes. I also had no aches, pains or niggles though now I do feel like I've run 13km but it feels good ;-D
Today I also tried a different energy boost gel. This time Science in Sport Smart 1 Now to say I actually like this would be stretching it slightly however this is the best I have tried so far. It was a lot less viscose than the others I've tried and a lot less sickly sweet. I took it after about 40 minutes and I think it did help as I'd only had my cereal bar before heading out. I need to start getting up earlier so I can eat a little more ahead of my long runs especially as they get longer.
There are a couple of minor issues to report - not injuries I don't know what to call them - annoyances really. I have cut my arm from my Doberman alarm rubbing the skin & I had a not very nice blood blister on the toe that has already lost a nail - I don't see these as bad things - I see them as proof that I'm becoming a real runner!

So the Stats for Week 3
Total distance run this week 36.11km
Total running time 3 hours 52 mins 16 secs
9 weeks today till the half Marathon :-$


and all this was by 10am this morning!!

After a well deserved muscle soak bath & some scrambled eggs, Mr Fudgey & I went into town and had a wee wander around the shops and stopped for coffee and cake - again well deserved I think.

We've also been & done a food shop and I have made a lamb chilli for tomorrow and the plum sauce for tonight.

Well time is marching on and I still have plenty to do so I guess I better leave you here and get on.

Take Care everyone

lots of love
Fudgey
xxx