Its been a while.......

Well it has been a while.  And a lot has happened. Last time I wrote I was struggling a bit with my training - times were poor, I felt really tired and things weren't going well at all.  Well just when I thought things were at a bit of a low, something even worse happened.  My mum, aged 83, had an accident.  While trying to get on a Train at Glasgow Central she somehow or other managed to end up falling down between the train and the platform, resulting in a broken leg, torn ligaments in her knee and a haematoma on the front of her leg (like a big blood bruise deep in the tissue).  So for the last 5 weeks I have been on visiting duty!  As an only daughter there is only me and no relatives nearby.  So between working, teaching classes, hospital visiting and trying to keep a 14 year old in check there hasn't been a lot of time for running.

However, I did eventually visit the Doctor about the tiredness just over 4 weeks ago. Doc was great, very sympathetic and took blood to test for a number of things - anaemia, thyroid and diabetes.  Felt quite relieved and was sure one of those things would show up, could be treated and I could move on.  However tests showed nothing apart from low neucrophils which are a type of white blood cell.  So have to be re-tested next week to see if they have returned to normal.  Seems a bit weird as low white blood cells would seem to indicate you would pick up all sorts of germs and colds, while I've got through the whole winter cold free - it just doesn''t seem to add up.

So, about 5 weeks ago, as a result of the tiredness and fatigue and mum's accident I decided to cut out all major training sessions and just run for "fun" for a few weeks. Just slow 3 mile runs, no garmin for timing and no serious sessions - no track, no fartlek and no long run.  After 2 weeks I started to feel better again and a couple of weeks ago I decided to go and run the Sport Relief Mile.  Its not an event I would normally do as its more of a fun run but it seemed like a nice, safe, non competitive run to get me going again.  Did the "mile" 6 times in a great wee loop round the city centre and finished in 40:40 which was quite a surprise.

The next week I introduced some 10K runs and last weekend I took part in the Glasgow Jogging Network 5K at Bellahouston Park and was delighted to win the race in about 21 and a half minutes.  Had the pleasure of the company of a colleague Paul from Glasgow Life for a lot of the course.  Paul ran a blinder and got himself a new PB finishing in front of me. Got lovely flowers, vouchers for Good2run (new trainers!!!!) and a free entry for the Great Scottish Run!   That was a lovely boost and again not an overly competitive race - really nice sometimes to go back to these races rather than the blood, sweat and tears of the much more competitive club races.

Encouraged by these 2 performances and conscious that I'm in a race against time to be ready for the Women's 10K, I've stepped up my training in the last week, doing a couple of speed sessions, one at the track with our Coach Derek Parker (who is very encouraging), one hill session and a long run today which was hard with the wind and the rain.  Not ideal either having raced yesterday but its about "windows" to run just now so had to go for it.  Its 10 miles "in the bag" anyway - thank goodness. 

Yesterday I took part in another race - the 6K "Round the Loch" at Strathclyde Country Park.  25:51 - not bad, but not great. About 4.19 km pace and I need to be at 4.06 so a bit of work to do, but at least I'm running.  But, on the positve side, my friend and fellow club runner Gemma Rankin won the 10 mile race in under 58 mins and is the new Scottish 10 mile champion!!! Gemma now goes on to run in the London marthon in just under 2 weeks and is looking at a time of around 2.45!  For those of you that run on the treadmill that's running at about 16kph for nearly 3 hours!!!  Now that's running!!!!

I promise to be a more regular blogger from here on in.  Hope you are all preparing well - keep it up!   We have just 5 weeks to go!!