Road to the Women's 10K

This is my first ever blog, so by way of some background, I know Lynne McPhee, and also know Gemma, to whom she referred in her first blog, and can easily see why they could be mistaken for mother and daughter. My age just about qualifies me to be Lynne's mum, (don't want to think what that means re Gemma) but we'd never be mistaken - they are both tall, willowy blondes and I'm dark, short by comparison and tend to be muscle-y!

I have run very intermittently for a number of years, doing the Race for Life 5k from time to time, but around 4 years ago I started to wonder if I had the ability to do a 10k. I buckled down to some steady outdoor training, discovered that I enjoyed it and now I call myself a runner!

Last year, two unrelated but significant injuries kept me out of both the races I like to run in - the Women's and Paisley 10Ks, though I ran the Urbanathlon 7K obstacle course in Linn Park in between them. I started getting back to training in November, and have rehabbed through walk/jog intervals to running again but I'm still pretty flexible with what I do training wise, depending on how my back feels.

At the moment I have settled into a pattern of a short run of around 20-25mins and a brisk half hour walk midweek, with a longer run on a Sunday. I've increased the Sunday run by half a mile a week and have now reached 5miles. I cant tell you how good that felt! :-D    Still running very slowly, but that's ok for now. I've had lots of help from my husband who has come out on Sunday runs to encourage me, especially getting up hills, which abound in Paisley!

I include two kettlebell sessions in my week, I'm also building them back up to normal. Traditional Russian kettlebell training is excellent for core strength and stability as well as being good cardio wise, and more recently I have added a yoga class. There's plenty of rest/recovery days in there too - important for everyone, but especially as you get a bit older.

We were down in Cardiff visiting our son and his wife for the long weekend, so it was a light training week overall, and instead of a long run on Sunday we did the Cardiff parkrun. Its flat - a big change from Pollok Park! - alongside the River Taff, a nice run, and it was dry, thankfully.  Back to normal sessions this week, though, and hoping the rain goes off today!!  

My road to the Women's 10K started kinda bumpy, but in the last few weeks it has been smoothing out, so I reckon I'm on my way.   All going well I'll be increasing to 3 running days a week in March, to be ready for the big day!