If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!

I’ve thought long and hard the last few weeks since gaining my Marathon spot about what my training plan will be. Seeing as I’ve not actually BEEN running yet…thinking is all I have actually done.

That and setting up a ‘JustGiving’ page and a Blog!

Yet whilst I am not a ‘Marathon Runner’ per se… I have actually run the London Marathon before so can speak with some authority on the subject – for myself that is! I know what my capabilities are. I know what went wrong and more important (correct syntax for the purposes of my Brother John and My Boss!) ... what went right for me!

It’s easy to be ‘romantic’ when you think back on your London Marathon experience. It’s kind of like child-birth really….incredibly painful at the time and then somehow you forget that and go on to do the whole thing again!

For me I got to the end of the Marathon (result really) and said “NEVER again”. By the time I hit Chinatown that night with my medal around my neck (I told you before, food is always on my mind) I had started saying “IF I ever did this again, I would do this or that” … to the next morning floating around the hotel swimming pool (as I had no ability to get out by then) saying “WHEN I do this next time…”. 

So there you have it… proof that I really am THAT stupid.

The fact is though, that for many many people the Marathon is actually quite addictive. It’s like my Husband and Tattoos……he said he was only doing that small little one years ago!

So now my mind is venturing back to last time and the schedule I undertook back then, the barriers to my training, my fitness as it were… and how I intend to tackle it all this time around.  I’ve been taking a long hard look at my life as it were and I’ve remembered this:

·         Back then I was working in the city in the day and drinking in the pub in the evenings

·         Back then I was spending full-on weekends with my Step-Daughter and Husband and rushing around like a maniac

·         Back then I hadn’t run anything since school other than high credit card bills

And this brings me to the ‘here and now’ and I’ve realised that:

·         Now I am still working in the city in the day and drinking at home in the evenings

·         Now I am spending full-on weekends with my two little Monsters and Husband and rushing around like a maniac

·         Now I haven’t run anything since the last Marathon other than the school-run!

Not a lot has actually changed in reality!

So on this basis I have decided to embark on a similar running plan to the last time around in the hope I can repeat a similar run on the day next year!  After all, I don’t think it was such a bad attempt 10 years ago if you discount setting off with an injury, picking up a new one along the way, being caught talking on my mobile phone at the optimum ‘photo opportunities’ and getting side-tracked by the handsome Fire fighters along the way ;o)

Not that bad at all!

Yep folks – if it ain’t broke – don’t fix it!

 

Go Trish 'AGAIN'

So my boss says to me today “where’s your next blog Trish?” and before I can retort he has already reminded me that I’m yet to ‘start training’….insinuating that I have nothing to blog about therefore.

Pah!

I have been in fact mulling over an idea these last few days, a thought that has been gathering pace in my head so much so that I just have to throw it out there and get it over and done with.

So here it is: What is going to be ‘my thing’? -  I have to have a ‘thing’.

A ‘thing ‘I hear you say? What is she going on about?

Well for those of you 10 years ago who came out in your droves to support me (via the City Pride pub in Isle of Dogs naturally)… you will know what I mean. ‘Go Trish’ was daubed over everyone’s t-shirts, all the wonderful friends and family alike who came to support me that day.  The banner created for me was so big (but certainly not as big as the one draped over the top of our pub at the time I might add!) that you almost felt someone quite important was about to come running past. They weren’t – it was just me.  Such was your overwhelming (by that I mean LOUD) support on the day that the BBC could not help but take notice of you all. Cue a rather random interview of you mad lot during the live marathon coverage where you decided to tell the Reporter I was running injured and raise their interest further.  Then followed a weird ‘Anneka Rice’ moment for me (without the pert bottom) where I was suddenly converged upon by the BBC camera crew as I exited the tunnel approaching the City Pride...sweaty, tired, make-up free (thanks a lot) and looking less than classy to be faced with a ‘live on the spot’ interview for the BBC.

There are so many amazing things about ‘that moment’ none more so though then the fact that my Brother Stephen (for whom I shall be running next year’s Marathon) was sitting in his little house in Germany watching the Marathon coverage only to be suddenly faced with a screen full of familiar faces. If you knew Stephen you would know how excited this made him. He couldn’t be there, yet ‘somehow’ you brought it all to him via the medium of television and the fact you are all gob-shites!  He was ecstatic – telling everyone that his Little Sister was there on the telly being interviewed along with all his friends and family. Marvellous.

So ten years later so many things have changed, especially and painfully that Stephen is not with us now. It also turns out that the City Pride has closed down (a victim of the Docklands property development – boo BIG hiss!) and it occurs to me – what do we do now? I’ve joked about bringing out your old t-shirts and just adding the word ‘again’ on them – I’m simply stunned by just how many of you actually kept them. The creation of rather large banners has been touted once more.  I feel the early twinges of excitement building...I know you all well…I know you’ll be amazing on the day!

However, on the back of the Olympics I see more possibilities though...I want ‘a thing’.  Mo Farrah has the ‘Mobot’, Usain his ‘Bolt’ of course…what can mine be? The ‘Trishster’ perhaps? (yes Anna, I know this term for me belongs to you - but you’d still have to find me a ‘move’ to accompany it). I just don’t know what it could be? I’m renowned for swigging a glass of wine given the opportunity, but that’s not quite going to work as I navigate the Marathon route is it – which is a bit of a shame really.

I thought maybe of doing something that relates in some way to Beating Bowel Cancer.  So that just conjures up ‘bums’ and I’m not sure if I can pull off a Beyonce-esque bootylicious shaking of my derriere. Hmnnnnnnnnn…

So I’m throwing it out there to you all...give me some ideas please...create me ‘a thing’. I might even reward you should I pick your idea. Bottle of Cava anyone?   You’re an imaginative lot, so show me what you can come up with.

We can then bring it out next year in full force and who knows….maybe it will be BBC coverage ‘round 2’. 

Then we have to find ourselves a new ‘City Pride’ to host your mad cap entertainment. One thing at a time though…

x

An auspicious start!

I am sitting in the waiting room of the Osteopath clinic waiting to be seen about my foot.  4 days ago I found out I was going to be running the 2013 London Marathon for Beating Bowel Cancer and rued the day I decided to wear wedge heels to a friend’s wedding just a mere few weeks ago. The shoes in question were pretty nice but my Naomi-Campbell-esque Catwalk disaster as I strutted back from the toilets during the reception a little worse for wear ‘not so good’. A friend witnessed (to her amusement) my fall from grace shall we say as my left foot simply buckled and twisted down to the side as I walked. At that point in time I was merely embarrassed by it and proceeded to right myself and carry on walking. I then decided to do exactly what you should do when you sprain your ankle at a wedding reception…down another drink and do the ‘running man dance’ for everyone’s amusement. This is, after all, my drunk show-piece that I reel out at numerous social events!

Cue the Sunday morning following the wedding reception and I am obliterated and ‘coming to’ in bed when I feel the most god-damn awful pain from my foot. I also felt a god-dam awful pain in my head but didn’t have to do a 30 minute WALK on my head to collect the car. Don’t panic...I was not going to be driving it…that was the other half’s pleasure – but he was making me share his pain by joining him on the walk to collect the car, plus we had the kids swimming lesson to get to and I ‘had’ to be at that. I’m pretty sure he could have gone to get the car and come back for me..but that’s another matter.

That rest of that Sunday had pretty much gone in a haze to be honest. I did all my usual tricks to get over my hangover..huge Sunday lunch at local pub, and some ‘hair of the dog’.  Thinking about this some more it occurred to me sitting there that large Sunday lunches and drinking generally speaking was something I was going to have to kick to the curb in light of ensuing Marathon training.  This was a depressing thought. Anyone who knows me knows I like food…I don’t just like it ..I LOVE it and I am always planning my day around food. I always eat one meal whilst thinking about what the next one will be and it’s fair to say that pretty much all of my disposable income goes on eating out whenever I can.  Between my foot and my eating habits, I could see I was pretty much screwed right now.

But was I? Thinking some more about it I realised that if the Osteopath felt that my foot was not quite ready to embark on serious training right now and that I should wait a while before starting my running plan….I could still get in some serious eating and enjoy some more Cava in the interim. A month’s respite maybe? Now my foot has been improving daily upto this point of sitting in the waiting room and I am now walking normally and not crying out in pain anymore – all good. Still, I decided for effect that I would put my best ‘limp’ forward as I approached the treatment room.

‘Patricia Harding?’ – yep that’s me – that’s my cue. So I upped and made my way through with slightly more hobble than necessary only to be greeted with – “been on the piss again?”.

Damn the fact that the stupid Osteopath is in fact my Nephew’s Dad and knows me only too well - I’m not going to able to get anything past him. I can see I am going to have to take this all a little more seriously hereon in.

Wish me luck!