The one where I ran 4 miles

I'm on cloud nine tonight - absolutely shattered, but on cloud nine.  Today was my scheduled long run of the week and it called for 4 miles.  I've been working myself into a frenzy all week over this.  Nerves have been getting to me, which is just utterly ridiculous because the only person I'm answerable to for running is me!

As regular readers of my blog will know, I've never run 4 miles before.  My furthest distance to date has been 3.5 miles and that was not a great run.  I decided to try out a new route today.  I wanted to give myself the best advantage to cover the distance, so I settled on an out and back route from near my kids' school.  It's practically flat and on road (sidewalk), and I regularly see runners going up and down it, so I thought I'd have a go.

A happy (sweaty) girl after a 4 mile run!

The weather today has been lovely - a typical crisp, cool, autumn day - perfect for running.  The family and I went to a restaurant for lunch (Toby Carvery), and I tried to restrain myself as much as possible because I didn't want a lump of food digesting while I ran later.  I had a modest portion of roast turkey, potatoes, leeks, carrots, cauliflower and stuffing and had an ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert.  I opted NOT to have an alcoholic drink with it and went for the sparkling mineral water instead.  We finished eating just before 2pm and I decided that around 4pm - provided I felt alright - I would tackle the run.

Just after 4pm, I drove to my starting point, parked the car and got my Walkmeter sorted.  Today would be the first run where I took my water bottle on a belt - I bought this from Amazon ages ago and have been using the water bottle, but have never taken the belt on a run.  Today, I had no other option because I was on the open road, so didn't have the option to leave it somewhere if I needed it.  I planned to stop briefly when I reached two miles, have a drink, stretch and then run the next two miles.

I started running and even though the belt was tightened it still took a while to get used to the motion of it bouncing up and down. I had secured it tightly with the elastic strap, so I knew it wouldn't fall out, but I suppose it was just a weird sensation that I've never had before on a run.  It also added weight - 16 ounces to be precise!  I suppose about half a mile into it, I adjusted and it no longer bothered me.  I felt good during the first mile and my speed was quite good - about 5.37mph.  I tried to slow it down a bit during mile two (to avoid the stitch!) and thankfully it helped.  I was definitely surprised how much further I had to run to get to two miles - I kept thinking to myself "Come on, Walkmeter, beep! Surely it has been two miles!".  Finally, after 22 minutes, I reached halfway.

I stopped my Walkmeter and took a minute's break.  I took a few drinks of the Nuun from my water bottle and stretched my legs and then started running again.  I was so grateful that I had decided on this flat route - it really helped me keep my speed consistent and also I did not suffer with the dreaded side stitch at all!  I headed back to the car with a slightly slower speed, but when my Walkmeter beeped at three miles, I had the adrenaline rush - "I'm going to run 4 miles!  I'm going to run 4 miles!"!  When I got to the point where I could see my car, I picked up the pace.  I kept thinking of what Jillian Michaels often says on her DVD's about "finishing strong".

When my Walkmeter finally beeped at 4 miles, I was elated!  I suppose the thing that I was happiest about was the fact that I still had some fuel left in the tank - I could have happily probably gone on to run 5 miles!  I'm so pleased that I'm making consistent progress and especially after my disappointing 3.5 mile run last week.  I'm also loving my new running gear - having this Dry Fit stuff seriously makes all the difference to your run, especially when there's a chill in the air and you don't want wet cotton sticking to your skin.  All in all, I am thrilled with my overall performance today - I can't wait to blog about the time I run 14 miles (in the not too distant future!)!

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So, this post is a bit backwards - I'm blogging about Sunday first and Saturday second!  Yesterday my son had a friend with us who had slept over on Friday night.  My husband took the boys swimming first thing, but after lunch (when hubby was playing football), I had the kids.  They had been playing various Nerf tournaments since Friday afternoon, and frankly it was doing my head in.  God bless the mothers who have the patience for little orange pellets whizzing past their heads at ridiculous speeds!  I located our hiking boots and loaded boots + kids into the car for an hour's walk at our local country park.

Me and my completely bonkers kid at the park

This walk would also count as my "cross-training" session for Saturday, so I was determined to keep a good pace.  I needn't have worried because my son's friend quite happily walked fast the whole way, which was really good because it helped my two speed up!  The leaves haven't quite started to change in the park yet, so it wasn't hugely picturesque, but it was still an excellent outing.  These poor boys had been given so much exercise - swimming in the morning, three mile walk in the afternoon, plus a very late night on Friday - they must have been knackered when we got home!

I was happy because I could tick off my exercise for the day, and was also happy that I had got my daughter out for some good exercise too.  I'm planning on reporting back on my Autumn Goals soon - I'm doing well so far, but have a couple of areas that I need to improve on!  Watch this space!

Well, I hope you all have a good week!  I've been roped into doing X-fit again on Wednesday night, Thursday's post should be interesting!

For my kids

Autumn is just around the corner - the days are still warm, but there's definitely a chill in the air.  The blackberries and elderberries have started ripening and some of the leaves have started to turn.  I love this time of year.  I'm looking forward to my autumnal weekend runs where I can take in the beautiful scenery.

Today, I took my daughter out for a walk.  We walked just over three miles and though I had to bribe her with a new magazine, she didn't complain and kept pace the whole time.  We even broke into a jog three times.  It didn't burn as many calories as my Jillian Michaels DVD, but it was totally worth it.  I've mentioned before that my kids are like chalk and cheese.  Josh is crazy about sports, always active and he loves it.  Verity generally doesn't like sports, she would happily sit and watch TV all day and not be active at all - plus she loves food.  All of this put together means that I have an overweight child.

Verity has always had a bit of a tummy since she was quite young, but in the last couple of years the "little tummy" has expanded.  In addition to not being very active, she does overeat and this is something that I really struggle with trying to control.  She's 10 years old now and much more independent.  She will regularly go into the kitchen and help herself to food.  It's got to the point now where I don't buy anything that she can snack on.  However, she will still find something - a piece of bread, a piece of fruit, yogurt, etc.

I guess because I feel like now I've got control over my own overeating and my own lack of doing any physical activity that my next priority should be to make sure my kids are as healthy as possible. I know how it feels to be overweight and to just have no energy.  Verity is 10 years old and should have bags of energy - yet today when we went on our walk she was struggling to keep pace.  She should be running circles around me, but instead I was holding her hand in order for her to keep up with me (and I wasn't going particularly fast).

Although I was never overweight, I was teased and bullied as a child (and a teenager!).  We moved to a small town when I was 9 years old and I just never fit in - I guess everyone's way of dealing with me was to tease me.  My nickname in high school was "the freak".  It hurts a lot being different and there were times when I was in high school when I thought about taking my own life.  I don't want my kids to go through anything even remotely similar.  We are blessed in that our kids go to a private Christian school with small class sizes and thankfully Verity hasn't yet been teased about her weight.  But I'm very aware that as the kids get older and start to go through puberty that things could change.  Not only that, but Verity will be more aware of how she looks and I want her to be a confident young lady!

So - this is my mission.  Having discovered for myself how to lose weight and get fit, I'm now focusing my attention on my daughter.  This explains one of my autumn goals - making breakfast for my kids everyday.  I want to teach her healthy habits - breakfast is not a time to have a big bowl of cereal, then a piece of bread, then a pot of yogurt - it's about having a wholesome, healthy start to the day in a right portion size.  In addition to a healthy breakfast, I'm stopping the needless snacking.  This one is going to take some discipline (and hearing like a bat! sometimes she will sneak into the kitchen and eat something while she's in there - I can hear rattling of packaging, so I know she's eating something!).  

I also want her to find an activity that she enjoys.  At her age, she needs to have fun - heck we all need to have fun with whatever exercise we do!  I don't want to force her to do an activity that she doesn't enjoy - but she must get some regular exercise.  And this is where some good family time can come into it - if we find an exercise that we can all do as a family.

This is going to be a learning curve.  It's one thing getting yourself motivated to lose weight - but it's a whole different story motivating a child.  I haven't shared this before because I've been working through in my own mind about how I can tackle it.  I would be really grateful if anyone reading this has any constructive suggestions on how to help.  I love my kids so much and want them to be happy, healthy people.  

I'm sweating pink!

This morning I got a fantastic email.  I went through my usual morning routine - checking facebook (seriously - I read it like the morning paper), twitter, blog stats and then email... I had to do a double take because the subject said "Sweat Pink Ambassador - welcome to the team!"!  Yes, I am officially a Sweat Pink Ambassador and I just want to thank the lovely ladies over at Fit Approach for the opportunity!

I've been hearing more and more recently about Fit Approach and the Ambassador programme, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what this new chapter brings.  Fit Approach promotes all round healthy living and that's certainly what I'm all about.  Losing weight is not just about seeing the number on the scales go down, and it's not about deprivation - it's about getting healthy and most importantly staying healthy!

So - I've made a little progress with my Autumn goals today.  I was planning on making the kids wholewheat pancakes this morning for breakfast - but when I got up my son had already made the pancake batter (albeit NOT wholewheat!) and was asking me to turn on the stove so he could cook them!  He's 12 and is doing food and nutrition at school and of course what did they make this week - pancakes!  He can even flip them in the frying pan (none on the ceiling - woohoo!) - so my kids had a kind of healthy home cooked breakfast courtesy of my son!

Verity started Girl Guides again tonight and the scout hut where they meet is precisely a 7 minute walk from our house - so she and I walked there and walked home.  Walking home wasn't so much fun because we live in a village without street lights and it was very nearly pitch black on the way back!  Verity said something to the effect of "this is what you see in horror movies just before somebody gets killed" - uh yeah, thanks kid - walk quicker!!!  And, how does my kid know about horror movies?!  Thankfully, we made it home without incident!

And - no bugs were eaten or harmed during my walk this evening!