Been a while!

Well, it's been a while since I last blogged, mostly because my sense of humour has been otherwise engaged (on secondment to my office :-p ). I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself because I completed a very fast 10m today.... but we'll come back to that later.

I went on holiday in Cumbria to try to escape London during the madness of Royal Wedding Week (variously known as Pippa Middleton Butt Appreciation Week and Tourists Who Would Normally Be Very Patriotic Wave The Union Jack Week. I thought I was very clever and, erm, cool to be avoiding all the frivolity (after all, with the world's economy teetering on the brink, the NHS in its swansong and the deadly cucumber epidemic, surely this is no time to be having fun?) but as it turned out on the day of the wedding I secretly wished I was standing in the crowds on the Mall (apparently people brought stepladders out??!).

Sooo I had a wonderful time in Cumbria, and during the course of the week clocked up almost 80 miles (running and walking when necessary ie. up steep bits like this: 






In the course of the week I managed to take in:

• 13.2 miles from the campsite in Gosforth up to Wastwater, moving up the hill south-east at Flass/Cinder Bridge and running across the top of Whin Rigg and Illgill Head before descending at the north end of Wast Water and attempting to run back across the scree (I sort of managed a funny hop most of the way across).
• Great Gable, Green Gable and Lingmell starting from Wasdale Head. 
• An extended version of the Mosedale Horseshoe (starting at Wasdale Head and running down to Overbeck Bridge, and then ascending Yewbarrow-Red Pike-Scoat Fell-Steeple-Pillar-Kirk Fell.
• A complete circuit of Ennerdale Water, including travelling some distance into Ennerdale Forest.
• The Langdales - Loft Crag-Pike of Stickle-Harrison Stickle-Thunacar Knott-High Raise and back via Stickle Tarn and Stickle Gill.
• From the north end of Buttermere: Red Pike-High Stile-High Crag-Seat-Buttermere Fell and back via the road to the north of the lake.

 I was accompanied on the last three by my lovely fiance who had his first experience of Jodie-style fellrunning (wear as much neon yellow as possible and run wherever possible and especially downhill) and trailrunning (see how many Boy Scouts you can take out on your way around the trail). I also didn't wash my hair for 7 days. It pretty much stood up by itself by the end of the week. Nice. So here's a gross photo of me looking very sweaty and like I've just run up a big hill:

And here are some considerably nicer photos of said hills.
Yewbarrow, Great Gable and Lingmell reflected in Wast Water:

The Scafell Pike range taken from Scoat Fell:

The wrong path (oops, someone followed me there) up Kirk Fell:

Me at mile 13 on my way back from Wast Water on the first day (thought I'd slip this one in):

Me being fronting up a random chicken in the carpark at Ennerdale Water who wanted to hustle our car:

The beautiful Ennerdale Water:

.... just beautiful.

The day we did the Langdale Pikes we parked the car at the New Hotel at Dungeon Ghyll. I went to reception to pay for parking and nipped into the ladies' on the way out. As I entered the bar there were about 20 hikers all in full gear, glued to a huge flat screen TV. My eyes followed their gaze and there in one of the most remote valleys in England were Kate and Wills exchanging vows. Not a dry eye in the house. Nowhere to hide....!!!

I arrived back in London and full of excitement at my training kickstart, RHD and I went for a long run the following weekend and did a full half marathon which we were pretty pleased with. We recovered from that a little bit too quickly so the weekend after that we decided to bring the run up to 14 miles, even though we could get away with resting at 13 miles for a couple of weeks as we were well ahead of schedule on the training plan. We set off from RHD's flat in Fulham and ran along the river which was an awesome run. RHD had been telling me about an amazing frozen yoghurt shop on the King's Road so we talked about frozen yoghurt all the way round and that pretty much got us round - we actually ended up doing 15 miles instead of 14 (with much protesting from me towards the end). We then went into the frozen yoghurt shop and, sweating profusely (well, I was anyway) ordered our dessert from the very confused guys behind the counter and walked back along the King's Road, getting some very strange looks indeed from the people spilling out of the bars (it was Friday night and we probably looked as if we'd gone for a 2 mile jog, given up and gone to get ice cream, daaaahling).

Continuing the cross training (kung fu, body pump, intervals, Pilates) during the week we were really starting to see a big improvement in the distance we can run and the pace we were able to sustain. So last weekend we found ourselves back in Cumbria - Ambleside - with RHD's parents (including her marathon crazy dad whose current ambition is to get into the 100-Marathons Club). We went for a 10 mile run with said dad on the Sunday and managed to time it so we ran back along the Brathay Marathon route.... just before the winners were due to finish. Oops. Cue lots of honking from passing motorists who clearly thought RHD was getting a gold medal and I was on my way for silver. At one point, a panicked-looking official saw us coming and started to jog on ahead of us. We had to call him and explain that although we might look like "runners" of some discription, we didn't really look like the Brathay Marathon winners... did we? The Brathay is notoriously difficult because of the hills and furthermore the finishers included some of the 10 In 10 runners who were running the Brathay as the 10th leg of a 10 marathons in 10 days challenge. Erm... in about a decade I might start to look vaguely like those guys. Maybe. We got through our 10 miles pretty fast though - we did 1:31:01 which we were delighted with, averaging 9:05 minute miles.

Which brings me back to today, in which I smashed through that PB by running 10 miles in 1:25:31. 8:33 minute miles over that distance for me is a real measure of my fitness and I am seeing a huge improvement now. Very exciting stuff. Thanks for reading and please keep supporting me - it really helps!