Sweepstake, Six weeks and Snow!

Referring to the title, these are the 3 exciting things that have happened this week!

1. My Sweepstake is now live!!!! YAY! its taken me a while to collect and confirm prizes from all my lovely very generous friends/family and set up the webpage for you all to take part.  A huge thank you to my contributors, they can all be found next to their prize details here.

To enter my sweepstake take a look at how it works HERE.  Come on get donating and win a prize!

2. Six weeks to go!! I still have 3 big training weekends before I start tapering before the big day, next weekend sees a 16 mile training session - this will be the furthest I have ever run! as I got up to 15 miles for my 2012 training before I was injured. Then its 17 and 18 miles for the next two following weekends.  I am struggling during the week with training as I am recovering from the long runs and quite frankly I hurt! but am going to keep going with some interval and fartlek training (German for speed play) where I can.  My aim is just to keep injury free so I get to the start.

3. This weekend saw the MK Half Marathon where myself, my brother Richard and his running buddys Alan and Jen, took to the streets of Milton Keynes.  It was bitterly cold and snowing most of the way round, it made for rather a cold miserable Mothers day for me.  However, I enjoyed the race element and tried to beat my half marathon PB of 2h 22m but only missed it by 2 minutes.  I did however have a new PB for my 5k of 30 mins 30 sec.

Half way there.............

Yesterday I ran half a marathon! 13.2 miles in 2 hours and 35 minutes and burnt 2000 calories ........

So to put this into perspective that's the equivalent of:

• Running from Towcester to Milton Keynes City centre to do a spot of shopping
• Running whilst watching the film 'The Sound of Music' although would not like to run in a nuns outfit!
• Burning off the calories of eating 100 Jelly Babies, eating the heads first obviously
• Running 52 times around a football pitch, less dull than watching a match I would say!
• Running whilst watching 7 episodes back to back of 'Friends'......'how you doin'..........
• Burning off the calories of two 'Big Mac' Meals yeuch!!!!

This time I ran with podcasts playing rather than 2+ hours of continuous music, so if anyone has any good books I could listen to or any interesting/funny etc podcasts they can think of the please let me know!

Just because I can't do anything without sneaking a little photograph in, google 'Nun running' here it is........ Nun running.... she does look remarkably happy about it! :)

{ The no-hill half } ~ Shakespeare Raceway

It's been great this year, having a training buddy....... well it was till she decided that we should do a half marathon only weeks since my last half marathon in London!!!!

So anyway decided that why not, I'll give it a go! The thing that sold it to me was the fact that its on a disused airfield...... now you say airfield ~ I think flatness!!!!! yes I was right, my GPS watch told me my total elevation gain for the entire 13.2 miles was in fact..... wait for it..... 22 meters!!! oh yeah that's what I'm talking about!!

I HATE hills, they are my biggest downfall, I just grind to a halt going up even the slightest elevation.... however I am not going to let this information take away the fact that I still managed a new PB of 2 hours 21 minutes and 58 seconds! I was thrilled and felt really good, no down points and even had energy for a sprint (of sorts) at the end (helped by Jess!)

Tracy my training partner also had a great race managing 2 hours 4 mins a PB for her as well.

Now we are looking at maybe a 10k before Christmas just to see if we can pick up our speed a little more!  I fancy trying a sub hour 6 miles as my goal!  Any ideas for a good race anyone??

Here are some piccies from the weekend, a before and after with medal!.

You can also see my pace, map and splits here. Click on the tabs at the right of the page to see splits and player!

Feel free to sponsor me if you think I am doing well so far.... its good motivation for me to keep running, thank you all!

Suzanne : )

Back at it.... my first half marathon for 2013 training

Okay so last years training resulting in me fracturing my ankle.... hoping for much more success this year!

After seeing a consultant and having 5 months with no training August saw me donning my kit again and hitting the road running!  There was me thinking I would be back real quick but alas it took a good month of hard work before I felt I got my pace back.

Me sporting a rather fetching 'Beckham boot'.   That's how they sold it too me anyway!
I'm doing things a little differently from last time.  Previously I solely ran and I did this all on my own...... this time I would like it to be different, I am currently training with a friend and also attending spinning and using the pool for an hour on 'ladies night' plus road cycling and obviously running - I am doing this to gain greater fitness, improve my speed and cut down the risk of another injury.

I have also set mini challenges throughout my training to 'spice' things up a bit! So along with Lucy Peacock and my Brother Richard we enrolled in the Run to the beat half marathon at the O2.  I was a bit nervous as had only managed 10 miles in the run up.  I wanted to beat my 2009 half marathon time of 2h 32 and managed to finish this one in 2h 33! bah!! Still I have booked myself in for another half marathon this weekend so will give it another bash at finishing in under 2h 30..... off to Stratford this time

So my fundraising page is still open and I managed the technical crossover of money from 2012 to 2013 with the help of the lovely people at Virgin so your messages are still up plus your great donations! Thank you for all my sponsors last year, but if you feel like you would like to sponsor again please feel free!