The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Fifteen weeks and two days until the Amsterdam Marathon!

The Good

Training's been going really well so far. I'm taking it super easy on easy days and pushing myself hard for my twice weekly sessions. I'm really looking forward to upping the distances on my long runs and pushing the pace when I start interval workouts in a couple of weeks (I might have changed my tune in six weeks...!)

Tomorrow, the Big Swede and I are off to Sweden! We'll mostly be staying with my sister-in-law, who lives on the west coast. A change of running scenery will be awesome. Unlike in Liverpool, there are lots and lots of traffic-free bike/walking paths and I fully intend to make use of them.

The Bad

Last year, after many, many runs where I just could. not. breathe, I was diagnosed with asthma. It's usually very much under control but sometimes, despite the drugs, it'll rear its ugly head. This week it decided to pop up and say, O HAI in the middle of a run. It's not a nice feeling -- it feels like whatever you do, you just can't get enough air into your lungs. Luckily, it seems like it was only a fleeting attack, probably brought on by lots of allergens in the air and less than stellar air quality. I feel much better now, after a few puffs of my inhalers, some breathing exercises, antihistamines and nasal spray. It's always unpleasant to be reminded that I'm not invincible though. I do take solace in the fact that both Paula Radcliffe and Haile Gebrselassie are asthmatic. They seem to have done ok. :)

Their fastest marathon times COMBINED are still faster than my marathon PB!

Also, without the asthma, I would have had no reason to knit myself this awesome inhaler cosy!

Apologies for the webcam photo. I've already packed my camera!

The Ugly

Well... on my last run... let's just say I came very close to meeting the Gingerbread Man. I made it home, thankfully. 

Thoughts on week #1

The first week of training for this year's Amsterdam Marathon is over and it ended on a high today. I ran 12mi/19.3km at a nice, easy pace and heart rate and it felt fantastic. The weather was great too. Sunny, but cool with a just a bit of a breeze.

This run has been a long time coming.

Two weeks after the Greater Manchester Marathon, I ran the Göteborgsvarvet half marathon. I had a lovely day (how could you not? It's the biggest half marathon in the world!), but a very slow run. I hadn't at all recovered from running 42.2km just a fortnight prior. I wasn't in any pain at all, but I felt like I was running with concrete posts for legs.

A few days later, I came down with a sinus infection. For seven days, I was on antibiotics and barely got out of bed. It was pretty nasty. So was what came out of my nose, but I'll spare you the details! Needless to say, I didn't run at all. When I finally felt well enough to hit the pavement, my running was awful. I was slow, I was sluggish, my heart rate was through the roof, and what would have been an easy run just weeks before felt like a 5k race (and they hurt!)

I wasn't best pleased. I knew I had to let my body recover from both the illness and the marathon and that meant running fairly short distances very, very slowly for a couple of weeks. It was humbling. I was running at a pace I hadn't seen since... well, since before I started training for my first marathon this time last year. It wasn't much fun, but it was for my own good, so I stuck it out.

This week, it feels like everything's finally come together. Last Sunday, I got a 10k PB on a challenging course, I really pushed myself on my hard workouts, and today, I ran the farthest I've run since Göteborgsvarvet and felt like I could have run forever.

Bring on week two!

How It All Began

So, I'm a runner. I come from Kenya. I am not a Kenyan Runner™, however. I'm not whippet thin and lightning fast. I didn't start running at an early age. In fact, I was the pudgy kid, turned overweight teenager who hated sport and exercise. I loathed P.E. at school and absolutely dreaded having to run more than a few metres.

Later, as a pretty overweight adult, who was very uncomfortable in her skin, I realised I needed to have some physical activity in my life and watch my diet, lest I remained overweight and uncomfortable. I joined the university gym, used the elliptical, did some aerobics classes and briefly dabbled with jogging as a means to lose the extra weight (and even did a couple of charity 5ks). It wasn't much fun, but I lost quite a bit of weight. My commitment to a healthier lifestyle waxed and waned wildly, and while I never regained all the weight I'd lost, I yo-yoed a lot.

In the Spring of  2011 I decided I would try running again. But this time, it wasn't going to be for weight loss. This time I was doing it for the challenge. To prove to myself that I wasn't destined to be sedentary and fat. This time, I was signing up not just for a charity 5k, but for a 10k too.

The first day I ran, I did three run 5 minutes/walk 3 minutes intervals. It was really hard, but I did it. I continued to slowly plod along, three times a week, until I could shuffle for 25 minutes, then 30, then 40... and you know what? I started to get a little faster and a little lighter and most importantly, I was really starting to enjoy myself.

In June, two months after I had started running, I ran my first 10k. I ran the whole thing and finished in 1:05:21. I was so proud. I had become a runner and I was hooked.

The 2011 Mersey Tunnel 10k. My first race!

So hooked, in fact that I signed up for the Liverpool Marathon in October. It's a BIG jump from 10k to marathon, but with consistency and sheer bloody-mindedness, it can be done! Nothing I've done before or since has hurt as much as that marathon did, but I finished it in 5:14:02.

Me and the Big Flag at the finish of the Liverpool Marathon.

And so a love affair with distance running began. Since then, I've run two half marathons, and, what I consider to be my greatest achievement so far, the Greater Manchester Marathon in 4:27:58. Forty-six minutes faster than my first marathon.

Before: A 5+ hour marathoner.

After: a sub-4:30 marathoner

So, what next? Another marathon, of course! Specifically, the TCS Amsterdam Marathon on October 21st. Today was my first day of training and I can't wait to see where the next four months take me.