The Dorset Beast: Twelve Miles of Rain, Mud and Cliffs.

Today was Dorset Beast day: a gnarly, hilly, off-road fest of hills, mud, tree roots, nettles, cliffs, coastal paths, biting wind and driving rain. We were up early for breakfast and ready when our friends arrived to pick us up at 8.30 for the 10.30 start. There were five of us heading off for the run: two speedy-pants, me somewhere in the middle and two slower boys. The scene above greeted us as we arrived at race HQ. Oh Dear.

We traipsed across the sodden field in a downpour that was to last the entire day and collected our numbers from the tent, hovering inside it as long as possible as the combined warmth of so many bodies had momentarily stopped the shivering, then queued for the loo in the rain and started shivering again whilst wondering what the hell we were doing there.

I had my traditional pre-race tuna-mayo-with-salad-from-the-garden half pitta (in the rain) which helped me warm up a bit, then it was time to strip off and don racing kit (in the rain) before trotting down to the start (in the rain).

I elected to wear my waterproof, woolly hat and gloves for which I was teased. I did not at any point over the next nearly-three hours regret them. M headed off to the front of the field wearing nothing more than a racing vest and shorts (that man is made of steel), with Sue a little behind him and then me and the boys further back....

We couldn't hear the race director's instructions because, even with the use of a megaphone, the wind snatched his words and whipped them away before they reached our ears. All we heard was the applause and a nervous ripple of laughter. I later learnt this was caused by a warning about cows in the fields, deservedly so as it turned out: there was a small stampede when M got to them which concluded with one of the cows jumping through the hedge. Luckily, by the time I arrived at the same spot half an hour later they'd calmed down and were all standing quietly in a group sheltering beneath the trees.

We set off, 400 runners galloping down a lane jostling for position while the rain baptised us soundly. I've had a dodgy knee for the last six weeks and was therefore running the race today with caution, it being a 'test race' (according to Physio Steve) to see what was going on. It was perhaps not the best race to choose to run with a less-than-fit knee as it was all hills, and big ones at that, but I'd been wanting to run it since I first found out about it and you know there is very little that stops me. Look at the hardy souls in the pic below running in shorts and t-shirts on the most miserable day this side of last winter! Hats off to them.

On we went, over commons (can you see Corfe castle there in the distance in the photo above?), across slick wet board walks across streams, over stiles, along the railway and down along country lanes through villages heading for the sea. My knee was OK, registering 1-2 out of 10 on the annoyance scale and I was plugging on through the awful conditions relatively well, if slowly.

We took the path up to the top of the quarry, and there was the sea, spread out looking angry and agitated in front of us...

It was a grey, broiling sort of day, the waves whipped into a white-crested fury by the wind which was mercifully blowing in land, otherwise I think several of us may have done kite-impressions and ballooned out over the water. As it was I was nearly knocked over by a particularly strong gust at one point. I found myself dimly wondering just how safe it was for 400 people to bounce up and down on the cliff path in a rainstorm so close to the edge of the land. I tried not to think too much about it and concentrate on my running instead, which was more a mix of run-walk at this point because a) the path was narrow and b) it kept going up hill.

We were more-or-less at the half-way point by now, around 6 miles. Traditionally, this is where I get into my stride and start over-taking people, but the terrain made it impossible to do that and to add to my woes, my knee had started aching more. The chap in front of me was progressing through a series of slips and slides that were essentially a kind of permanently-suspened fall, and I had to bite my lip to stop the giggle that kept wanting to burst from me at the sight. I think the weather and the conditions were combining to make me a little hysterical. The wind whipped up again at that point and small needles of rain began to drive into my left cheek. 

Feeling slightly smug (and slip-free in my fell shoes), I overtook Slipping Man as soon as I could. I got into my stride as we went past the coast guard, perched high up on St Aldhelm's Head, and waved at the coast-guard chap who was warm and dry inside. He waved back, doubtless thinking what idiots we were to be running twelves miles of hideous conditions along the exposed coastal path near Worth Matravers.

And then this happened....

The path disappeared down one side of an ankle-breaking cliff that was slick with mud to reappear on the other side, where a lung-busting climb awaited......

If you look carefully, you'll see the tiny brightly-coloured dots in a wavering line to the right of the dark mass of trees in the pic above. These are runners. Here's a close-up version.

I paused briefly to gather my courage and determination and while doing so took the opportunity to take this photo. You can barely see the coastline, so bad were the conditions....

I fared better than most of my fellows scrambling down the cliff path, thanks to my beloved Mud Claws (fell shoes with grippy bottoms that chewed the mud with a kind of disdainful Huh! Take That!). The screams and yelps of those behind me told their own tale. I didn't risk looking back; I just hoped they weren't going to free-fall all the way down and take me with them :o)

The climb up was not actually too bad. I've learnt not to look up to where you're going as it's just too distressing, plus the path was littered with bodies, casualties in road and trail shoes who were slip-sliding hopelessly down and sideways as they battled the slick mud of the path and the gradient. To my surprise, I reached the top relatively quickly and in good condition (blessed be the Mud Claws) and managed to overtake about five people on the next downward stretch because I had absolute faith in my shoes to hold me up, which they did, while people all around me were sliding and falling over.

The course dipped into a hollow and then began a long, arduous climb up a surfaced track. I lost heart here: I suddenly felt very tired and very heavy in the leg department, so I walked. Then ran on once we reached the top. I knew we didn't have far to go but my knee was starting to seriously hurt and I wondered if I'd be able to run for much longer.

At 11 miles it gave out entirely and all the people I'd worked so hard to overtake began streaming past me. It was the most disheartening moment I've yet experienced on a run. I had one mile to go and I just couldn't run without it hurting. So I walked. I hobbled. I rang M to tell him I was walking the last mile, then I saw some marshals ahead and as I was by now limping quite badly they asked if I wanted a car to drive me to the finish.

Well, OK, I might be in bits unable to run anywhere even slowly, but there is no way I'm running eleven and a half miles of a really tough race only to get a lift home for the last half mile. I'd have to be dead or unconscious. I thanked them, shook my head, gritted my teeth and carried on. I turned right off the field and onto a lane which wound uphill and walked up it sobbing, I was feeling so sorry for myself. A lovely marshal asked if I was OK and when I nodded miserably and told her I was determined to finish the race, she said you've got less than a hundred yards to go. Determined to cross the line not walking, I broke into a pathetic hobbling run, crossed the line in just under three hours and promptly burst into tears. It was my worst result time-wise since I began these longer-distance runs but even worse than that I was now consumed with the thought I might never run again.

M, as usual, was my hero.You did brilliantly, he said, wrapping me in a big hug. Your knee will mend and you'll race again. He should know, as he reminded me later, he's had two enforced significant rest-periods from injury in the last ten years and came back to run a marathon in his best-ever race position afterwards. He dried my tears and gave me a bacon butty. Friend Sue collected my t-shirt (bright yellow with a red roaring lion's head) and between them they got me back to the car, wrapped a warm towel round my shoulders and helped me pull off my sodden kit and replace it with something warm and dry. The boys came back not soon after and there was just time to take a final photo before heading home to a bath and a half-hour ice pack.

So there we have it. What a day! Should anyone kind enough to read the above experience the temptation, at this point, to tell me that I'll ruin my knee if I ever run another step, please resist it. I'm afraid it will fall on deaf ears. I'm just not the glass half-empty type and I don't give up easily.

Hope you're all well and have had a good weekend?

CT :o)

If You Want Perfect Toe Nails Don't Take Up Running

I wasn't going to show you this photo for obvious reasons, but M, who has a mischievous streak, said I should. This, my friends, is what running distances over ten miles does to your toes.....

Look away now if you're of a delicate nature or have a phobia about feet.

i've forgotten what it is to have pink toe nails. I've also forgotten that, for most people, it isn't really normal to have purple ones, unless you've painted them, and was wandering about happily barefoot the other day when my eldest niece exclaimed in horror what have you done to your toenails?!

The third one from right fell off entirely last week when I brushed against it, leaving this strange little creature underneath, a baby nail, which is already red. I know, from M and other friends who are endurance runners, that that's it now: my toe nails will never again be fit to be seen in company, unless I paint the other ones the same dark shade of purple to match.

For me, my newly en-purpled nails are a badge of honour; evidence of all the miles I've run this year, each one a memory of a half marathon or a long training run. I've got over my initial panic, fuelled by google-offered horror stories about what bruised nails mean (you'll get septicemia, you'll damage the nail bed so it will never recover and always cause you pain, you musn't run with a bruised nail and it'll take months to heal) and discovered instead that actually all you need do is stick a thick blister plaster over the bruised nail for the duration of the run and it's job done, life carries on as normal. They throb for a day or two but then you don't notice them until someone else says Oh. My. God.Your. Nails! 

I have made one concession, which is to go up half a shoe size in my running shoes, and have to say since doing that the nails haven't bruised as easily or painfully after long runs.

On a connected but somewhat healthier subject, I've discovered the 100 Marathon Club: run a hundred marathons and you get club membership, a special t-shirt and a medal. I spent an hour or two yesterday pouring over their website writing down the races that count and loving the fact that the majority of them are off road, trail marathons through spectacularly beautiful countryside. I was toying with the idea of running a half marathon each month next year and writing a book about it, HMs being an accessible distance for everyone with not a huge amount of training, but the idea of running a hundred marathons instead has fired my interest a lot more.

M has around 17 marathons to his credit, all of which count towards the 100, but because he trains hard for them and completes them in spectacularly fast times, he has no interest in doing more than two a year. I'm not Mrs Speedy Pants, so my training would be steadier (run slower, or walk/ run = it takes less out of you and the recovery time is quicker). Of course, I may run Edinburgh next year and say never again, but either way it's on the list of accepted marathons so it will count as number 1 of 100.

I've been inspired by two runners whose books I'm currently reading. Lisa Jackson, whose brilliant book your pace or mine demonstrates how it's possible to clock up a couple of marathons a month if you're not flying along at a tremendous pace. She's often the last runner home after taking 6 or 7 hours, but you would never call her unfit or incapable. She's run Comrades three times (a very tough ultra run of 50+ miles in South Africa that frequently breaks people, including friend B who trained for it for 6 months and found, when she got there, that her muscles seized up and she couldn't compete), and she's also run naked in a couple of naturist races, so she's not a lass who takes herself too seriously. She's now an official 100 marathon club member. And then there's Ira Rainy, who went from (in his own words) fat man to ultra-marathon runner. His story is piquing my interest in long-distance running.

These two runners have one thing in common and it's this: they both thought they could and so they did, which leads me to my current fave quote, attributed to Henry Ford but actually coming initially from Virgil: whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. I'm going to pin it up in the kitchen.

Lisa's book has a list of favourite t-shirt sayings she's seen in races. I liked: I have to keep going...I parked at the finish best, but the one that made me stop and think most was: I'm over here doing what you say is impossible.  

In 1967 Katherine Switzer ran the Boston Marathon when it was illegal for women to take part in races (1967!!! Can you believe that??) because it was believed that a) they weren't capable and b) they would damage their fertility. The deputy race director was enraged and lunged at her, intending to physically remove her from the race. Her boyfriend at the time, an olympic hammer-thrower, pushed him away and her coach who was on the course with her bellowed RUN! so she did, beating many of the men in the race. Interestingly, her fellow (male) competitors, supported her, but she wasn't given an official finish time. She had proved that not only were women capable of running a marathon, but that they were capable of running it well. But it would be another five years before women were officially allowed to compete (in 1972). And it wasn't until 1984 that they were allowed to enter the Olympic marathon. I feel a huge debt of gratitude to the trail-blazing women who paved the way for the rest of us to take part in a sport that gives us so much. The fact that these rules were changed within my lifetime means I feel it all the more keenly.

Hope you're all well?

CT :o)

Portishead Half Marathon

Last Monday, at ten o'clock at night, I decided I fancied running a road half marathon this weekend. Such is the brilliance of the internet on phones that, half an hour later after a little searching, I had found one that fitted the bill in Portishead, Bristol and had entered it. So this morning, the alarm went off at 6.30 and we headed off down the M4 to get there in time for the 10.15 start.

M, who is training for the Clarendon Marathon, drove us and was Support Crew as he and Poppy did a 19 mile run yesterday (we all agreed it was the most quiet we'd ever seen Pop afterwards, although it didn't last long and by afternoon she was bouncing around annoying Ted).

The weather was hot and sunny, but after Adderbury a few weeks ago where we ran in 28 degree heat (hot for the UK!), a mere 24 wasn't going to put me off. It was a Festival Of Running weekend, with various races taking part on both days, culminating in the Half this morning, so there were lots of folk gathered at the start and the tail end of the 5k was coming to a close as we arrived.

I got my number and pfaffed about for a while as usual trying to pin it on without attaching it to my skin....

The start was delayed by fifteen minutes for the kids' mile race to finish and then we were off, heading out into the streets of Portishead.

Neither of us had been to Portishead before. It's a small coastal down just outside Bristol with views over to Wales and a lovely marina, which we ran past on the two-lap route...

The marshals and locals were great, clapping and cheering the runners and calling out words of encouragement. As is usual on these longer runs, I got chatting to some lovely people. I didn't get the name of the lady above, but we had a good natter about Portishead (she lived there) and marathons (she'd run London earlier in the year and Gloucester at the start of the month) while we ran together.

I'd decided to work on my pace for this HM, having left it to chance with the previous three which have all been hilly, off road, tough runs where time is, frankly, irrelevant. I reckoned if I could do between 5.40-6 minute kms on this one I'd turn in a respectable performance. This course wasn't without hills so it was never going to be super-fast, but I stuck to my guns and maintained a steady rhythm all the way and by the time I finished I wasn't exhausted but didn't have oodles of energy left over either, so I think I judged it about right. All useful stuff with half an eye on Edinburgh next year.

On the final 3k I fell into step with a lovely chap called David who was using the run as pace training for the New Forest Marathon this September. I was tiring a bit by then and we still had one final long hill to get up just before the finish. He was a complete star, chatting away, getting me up the smaller hill before the big one by slowing down so I could run beside him. I've written before how runners can help one another by either pacing side-by-side or by leading when one is tired, and that is what he did for me.

Soon we passed M waving and cheering and that gave me a lift. The course turned downhill and we were joined by a friend of David's as well as a lady who'd faltered on the previous hill and another chap. Our little group of five stuck together for the final KM, egging one another one, making sure we were all ok, checking it was safe for all of us to cross roads together. Runners. You won't find a nicer, kinder, more supportive bunch of people.

At the final hill there was M cheering and yelling me on so I superglued myself to David's elbow and managed to keep running up all of it, but I was flagging and then I heard David telling me push, push, push and that simple bit of encouragement helped me find some little bit of left-over energy from somewhere to get up the last bit of the hill and turn down to the finish. Here we are just reaching the top of that final hill having run 13 miles in the heat...

We were running side-by-side as we turned to the finish so I suggested sprint finish? We pelted down the hill together grinning and then he did what is quite possibly the nicest thing anyone who isn't my husband has ever done for me in a race- he slowed down so that I could cross the line first. David, if you happen to read this, or someone from Bristol who knows you does: thank you so much for getting me up that hill and being such a true gent at the finish. These races are, in many ways, made for me not by the time I run them in, but by the many examples of truly decent human beings I meet on the way round them.

Job Done. HM # 4 in the bag and at 12 minutes faster than my previous best too.

Happy Days!

Hope you're all well?

CT x

In Which We Get GCSE Results, A Glut Of Vegetables, A Close Shave With A Mad Dog And Make Some Things

It's that time of year isn't it? When courgettes morph overnight into marrows and tomato plants go mad. I've given away seven monster courgettes at the gate since yesterday. The most pleasing of these was when of the rubbish men stopped his enormous truck mid-collection, dropped down out of the cab, seized the biggest one and told me with a huge grin I'm having this one! before calmly continuing on down the lane to finish collecting everyone's recycling.

I've made the red toms into this: 

It's from Sarah Raven's Garden Book. I left out the wine and cloves. It's lovely, really rich. We're having it tonight with jacket spuds and sausages, and these for pud....

Made with really dark chocolate. It's the first time I've managed to get the shiny thin papery layer on the top. They are very rich, to the extent that I (famous for stuffing myself with brownies) can honestly only manage one small one. M is marathon training at present, clocking up 70 odd miles this week, so food is being consumed here at a great rate of knots. I can barely keep up with demand and am cooking furiously so there's always something interesting and filling in the cupboards/ fridge/ tins. Added to this I'm also upping my distances as I've got 5 half marathons to run in the next couple of months and I seem to be visiting supermarkets and collecting free food from the hedgerows/ trees on an almost daily basis!

Last night, he ran in the last RR10 of the season, three laps of a university playing field. I didn't fancy it so ran cross country in the morning with the dogs instead and went along last night to support everyone. It makes a big difference in a race having someone cheering you along. I shouted encouragement to the twenty or so members of our club and got waves and grins back from all of them as they whizzed, trotted or trudged past. Elder Statesman Derek said afterwards it had really helped him muster the energy for the final lap. If you're ever watching a race and in doubt about encouraging the runners go for it- they will love you for it and you might make the difference between someone finishing or not.

The dogs and I were out early in the fields this morning; we hit the trail at 7.30 and it was bliss. No one about, only the buzzards and a few deer and what I think was a peregrine having a scuffle with a buzzard. The run was lovely, cool and fresh and strong. The only blip was when a big black labrador came out of nowhere (from behind us), knocked Ted flying and rushed, barking and snarling, phlegm flying from its rather large teeth, at me. It was rather terrifying as we were in the middle of nowhere and I had nothing, not even the dogs' leads, with me to swipe at it. Instead, more because I was outraged at the way it had run straight over Teddy and rolled him like a ball than because of any conscious thought process, I screamed furiously at it, waving my arms about. Fortunately, this worked and it turned round and ran back to its people who were too far away to have seen/ controlled it. It did shake me up a bit because it was entirely unprovoked. Teddy was fine, just a bit nervous afterwards. We got straight on with our run and put as much distance as possible between it and us. Luckily, for the most part, you can see for miles in those fields, so if I ever see it again I'll make sure we give it a very wide berth.

On a lighter note, I've been doing some more sewing...

And am wondering what to make with these...

Finally, L collected his GCSE results this morning. He's done brilliantly and we're all really proud of him. He took RE a year early (last year) and got an A, for which I gave him a bag of chocolate eclairs as a well done I am proud of you present. He grinned when he saw them because one of his friend's parents had forked out 400 quid for the same result. It has become a standing joke between us since then that whenever he does well I give him a bag of chocolate eclairs, so of course, you can imagine what he got this morning. He grinned even more broadly when he received them, informing me that a family he knows told their son he'd get £1000 for every A he produced. I informed him sweetly that the grades were reward enough (although there will be a small cash prize winging it's way to him shortly). We have agreed that I am a terrible mother :o)

Happy Days here (I even forgot to go to Yoga amid all the excitement).

Hope you're all well?

CT x

Jams, Quilts & Falling Off Punts Into Rivers

There is a crab apple tree in one of the hedges on my local run. For the past week, it has been dropping its fruit on the ploughed field and I've been jumping over the tiny speckled apples thinking I really must come and collect some for winter jelly. I remembered to do this over the weekend and today I made up two kilner jars of rosehip and crab apple jelly. It tastes lovely and the colour....oh my! Next stop...tomato and courgette chutney (once I have changed the gas canister over).

I have also finished F's going away to uni quilt today, with help from Chief Quilt Overseer, Poppy...

While Deputy Quilt Overseer Ted slept on oblivious on top of a double layer of beds. Poppy grumbled it was like the princess and the pea as she lay down on the floor watching me pin layers of fabric together, ignoring the occasional gentle swear as I pinned my finger instead.

I'm pleased with the way it's turned out, and quite tempted to make an identical one for us as there's enough fabric left over. It's very snuggly and warm, thanks to the wadding which is 50% cotton, 50% bamboo, so nice and soft.

I particularly love this dove fabric which is part of the quilt. The finished product has a faintly medieval feel which is perfect as F is off to study archeology....

We spent a chunk of the weekend punting on the Cherwell in Oxford with fifteen members of the family before all heading off to a hotel in the Cotswolds for the night to celebrate M's 50th and L's 16th. The punting has become something of a summer tradition since the children were little, and it's become obligatory for the three dads (M, his brother and cousin) to "fall" in. They duly obliged in style, much to the hilarity of everyone else (including complete strangers in other punts who nevertheless hastened past, clearly keen to establish a reasonable bit of watery distance between themselves and the loons in the three punts). The littlest boys (aged 11 and 8) were in ecstasy at the dunkings, particularly as the oldest pushed M in (no photo of that as M took ages re-emerging and I was starting to panic that he'd drowned). He discovered the hard way that if you're going to shove an uncle off a punt into a river you're quite likely to find yourself being taken along with him (see third pic down) :o)

The hotel, on the edge of the Cotswolds, was lovely. A proper old-fashioned place. The rooms were huge, light and airy and we had a dining room all to ourselves (probably wise- we're a raucous bunch) with the tables set out like a tudor banquet. M, L and I sat at the head with two long arms of family stretching down either side. The food was delicious and after supper we all retired to the bar snug where whiskey, brandy, port and baileys did several rounds amid much conversation and laughter from large old leather and fabric armchairs.

The following morning, after a leisurely breakfast, we headed off en masse (complete with helium filled silver birthday balloons, one of which had found its way into my car where it proceeded to drive me mad floating about on the back seat like a disembodied head) to visit Great Coxwell Barn, a 13th century Cotswold stone barn that was once part of a monastic farm complex. M and I had been before, it is very beautiful. The last time we were there, earlier this summer, a Little Owl flew out of the barn right over my head and perched on the roof of the court house below. There are also several species of bat in the roof which has the original 13th C timbers. Master Craftsmanship, eh?

Talking of owls, last Sunday evening a Barn Owl floated down out of the gloaming and sat on our garage roof. He was there ages, looking around, peering in the window at us. Magical.

The Garden Birds are still eating me out of house and home. We now have siskins a-plenty, back in the garden much earlier than in previous years (I usually don't see them until January has stripped the cones from the trees), and the baby woodie is still around too. The Swifts have left Romsey and I haven't heard Blackcaps or Chiffchaffs for ages, so assume they've also headed off. But the Robins have started singing again and my heron has returned to the lake and the wrens are busy being bossy and scolding everyone in sight....

Great Tit

Marsh Tit

Assorted Tits in the rain

Siskins and goldfinches

Sparrows squabbling over the water

Baby GSW

Running-wise, I'm now back to under 24 minute Parkrun times and have another half marathon this weekend. A road race this time, just to try something a bit different. I'd been grumbling to M that I didn't feel like my fitness had improved recently, then it occurred to me that a month ago there's no way I would have decided on a Monday that I fancied running a half marathon at the weekend, looked one up and booked it, so I guess that speaks for itself. Measuring improvements in your ability becomes harder the longer you've been running, I'm finding. Anyway, I'm interested to see how I do as this race is completely different from my preferred off road and hilly ones. I will report back (warts and all).

Hope you're all well? We have GCSE results here on Thursday. We are not panicking. We are actually Quite Calm. I will be proud of him whatever the results as he worked his socks off so he deserves to do well. You can't ask anyone for more than that.

CT :o)

Marathon Training Thoughts, And Puppies.

I had a letter yesterday from my dear friend Shauna who is close to finishing the couch to 5k programme. She got me thinking about running in all its shapes and forms. I know from experience what a massive achievement it is to complete your first 5k, and how good it feels to finish something you've worked so hard towards. 

Meanwhile, I've had a tough week training-wise, probably still feeling the effects of the half marathon. I was feeling frustrated by it, then I looked back at my diary and realised I've run  a fast Parkrun on Sat, did 6 miles on Sunday and 5 miles including fast intervals last night. A few months ago I would not have been able to do that without collapsing, so I think it's probably a matter of perspective. Once you start to clock up longer distances or faster times you get, if anything, more self critical and less satisfied with your own performance. I have a sneaky feeling that's why I've entered a marathon for next year and it's also why I choose more technically difficult races over the flat, fast road ones. I need to challenge myself.

I spent a little time yesterday working out a marathon training programme. It's quite an overwhelming topic to research when it's your first one and you have no experience to fall back on. I've ended up doing what I usually do, which is downloading a few examples, and then working my own one out based on those I've seen and how I've previously trained to up my distances. I'm relatively confident in the result but am still going to email it out to a few friends (thank you in advance, Kate and others!) to get their thoughts.

When M got home I gave him my version and one I'd found on the Edinburgh marathon site to compare.  He went through both with me and thought I'd got enough miles in with enough rest days between to get me there. I can honestly say it starts to look a bit scary when you see the miles you need to run in order to be fit enough to do a marathon mapped out in calendar form stretching over, in my case, five months of training. We're talking, once the first month is done, of an average weekly mileage of around 30 miles, split into various distances with one big run increasing from 14-20 miles every other week and four days of training back-to-back. It's nothing like training for a half. I can quite see why running club buddy Dan told me he's decided to stick with half marathons because they are easier to achieve and don't require months and hours of training, yet they are still a very respectable endurance distance.

I've also been advised by more experienced runners to get a few hefty competitive runs in in the weeks prior to the marathon. This means distance and tough terrain for stamina, and also choosing at least one race that has a large field so I have some experience of running with 10,000 other competitors before I hit Edinburgh and it's 40,000. It's all good advice, but trying to work these in to the training programme so you get the right miles in at the right time takes some juggling. There is a coastal trail series of runs organised by Endurance Life which tackle some really beautiful but tough landscapes all round the British coastline. They offer four distances from 10k up to ultra marathon. The half marathon options often take in 1000 metres of climb, and can be more like 16 mile runs, so they aren't for the faint hearted, but they would be a good training for Edinburgh so that's one solution.

I lay in bed this morning thinking about routes, because mapping the runs out in a calendar is only half the story, you've got to work out where you're going to cover the miles. I found myself thinking about Ed Whitlock, the Canadian octogenarian who blasts marathon world records whenever he runs. His training is around his local cemetary. The obvious solution for me is to work mine around my existing runs, which in reality probably means running laps. As the land I run through is so beautiful I don't think this will be a big problem but it's still something to consider. Laps can be soul-destroying but I'm hoping they'll work for me.

Friend Peat advised me to allow enough time to factor in four or five 20 mile runs prior to the race, when you add this to a 3 week trailing off phase and factor in enough time to get up to being able to run 20 miles, and then put in a week or two between these long runs you start to see why it takes four or five months to be ready.

M, being that much more experienced, kicks his marathon training off about two months prior to a race. His autumn marathon is the start of October and he's already banging out two  sets of 9 mile runs in a day and will be heading off for his 20-miler next weekend. I obviously have to approach it differently, giving myself plenty of time to see how it all works out and how I respond to the challenge that learning how to run a marathon presents.

Friend and ultra-runner Brenda summed it all up perfectly when she emailed me last week: you're going to get a lot of advice. Listen to it all, decide which bits work for you, and then it's probably best to disregard 90% of the rest.

It's a learning curve.

Hope you're all well?

I'll leave you with a photo of the latest members of the family: my sister's retriever Toffee gave birth to nine little pups yesterday morning. Here they are, only a couple of hours old. Altogether now: ahhhhhh!

CT.

Post Party (pudding pictures for CJ)

Everything went off fine. No emergencies beforehand; the dogs didn't roll in anything unspeakable; no one fell into a badger latrine or down a ditch; everyone got to the house safely. Even the weather played ball by being warm enough until after dusk for everyone to mooch about on the patio drinking and chatting and admiring the flowers.

The food went down a storm and there isn't too much left over. The advantage of inviting runners to your home is that they are never on a diet, are always hungry and come back for thirds. What there is leftover will do for supper tonight with the remainder going into the freezer.

We watched Mo's race :o( and then we watched Bolt's relay, which turned out to be a mixture of :o( and then :o) when I realised we'd won! M is very excited at the thought of Mo concentrating on marathons from now on (hoping to race against him at some point). I think the results showed both men were right to be retiring.

The dogs weren't impressed with all the screaming at the tele as the races drew to a close and took themselves off into the kitchen to give the excitable humans time to calm down,  before returning and taking refuge under the table. Pop was in her element all evening with lots of legs to sniff and even Ted emerged from under the table periodically to go and stare at specific people he'd been keeping an eye on, obviously having decided they were safe to approach. 

L kept his head down, foxing all attempts by Auntie Jo and Auntie Saz to find him. He's known them since he was two and they haven't seen him for a year so were keen to discover how tall he'd got. They duly set off, tottering on high heels with glasses of prosecco in hand, to dig him out of the study where he can usually reliably be found plugged into the computer, but he'd squirrelled himself away in the attic for the duration and only reappeared once most people had gone home, figuring no doubt that by then it was safe to come out to forage in the kitchen.

We were in bed by midnight, having done all the tidying and cleaning, and woke this morning feeling ready for a nice six mile run which we duly did round the lanes in the sun. I was a little low on running energy, not, I think, from the party, but because I did a fairly speedy Parkrun yesterday, back to within a minute of my PB, which I'm chasing again, I think.

Hope you're all well and have had peaceful weekends?

CT :o)