I survived!

The title says it all - I survived the London marathon! In fact I would go as far as saying I enjoyed it - despite the weather. I never hit the much talked about 'wall' and finished in 3hrs 52 mins (and 59 seconds - but who is counting?). I felt amazingly OK last night - I even cycled home from the station. Today is a different story and I am aching from the neck down! I will post a more detailed race report in a few days, but for now I am just going to lie down in a dark room and not move...

Costume and weather

The preliminary weather forecasts for Sunday are out, and in my opinion they aren't at all favourable. Mild (11oC maximum), but with rain and strong winds, which will equate to a head wind for the last half of the course. I am not too concerned at this stage as the weather forecast in this country generally changes at least three times a day.
Now to more important news - the costume! Keeping with the black and white theme from last time, I am running as a zebra. A bit random, but I found a zebra print skirt, and hence the idea was born!

One week to go...

With just under one week until race day, the running training is all but over. The focus has shifted to carb-loading and resting the legs. Last week was scheduled to be 20 miles (32km). However, when the sun came out (which is quite a rare occurrence in this part of the world) I found it hard to resist putting on the trainers and heading out for a run. My week went something like this:
Monday - 5.3 miles to Coton (8.5km) to loosen the legs after orienteering
Tuesday - 6.25 miles to Granchester (10km)
Wednesday - took advantage of the warm weather to go sculling + jog to and from the boathouse 2.5 miles (4km)
Thursday - more sunshine so we hit the river for another sculling session.
Friday - 6.25 miles to Granchester again (10km)
Saturday - a pre-breakfast 8.8 mile (14km) run along the river.
In total 29 miles (46.5 km) - I will definitely have to work on my tapering next week!

The Vines retirement village - leading the way

My grandparents have recently moved into the Vines retirement village in Evanston. I was talking to my granny last week about the response of the village residents to the water restrictions and it seems that they are leading the way in water conservation. Some residents have rainwater tanks, while others are using water from washing machines to water gardens.
I would like to draw your attention to the comments on a previous post from Ted and Molly who have highlighted further methods for water savings. They use a bucket to collect the cold water that runs through tap before it heats up. They also use the rinse water from the washing machine to water the garden. Both are brilliant suggestions and have the potential to not only save signficant amounts of water, but also allow them to maintain their small garden.

Two weeks to go..

Sorry for the lack of recent posting, but I have spent the past week trying to navigate my way through frozen Swedish forests as part of the Cambridge Orienteering team. The week before I left was to be my last major training week, with 35 miles scheduled. Here is how my training progressed:
Monday - 6.25 miles to Granchester
Tuesday - two runs for a total of 10.6 miles
Wednesday - we discovered a new 8.4 mile route through the countryside
Thursday - day off
Friday - Extremely windy, but we managed 6.2 miles
Saturday - the weather deteriorated and we headed for the shelter of the gym for an erg and 3 mile interval session on the treadmill.
Sunday - SNOW!! I awoke to discover a white Easter. No training, only chocolate eating and snowman making :)
Monday - A solo 10 mile run.
In total 44 miles over 8 days - not a bad effort, especially given the weather.
Tuesday saw me fly to Stockholm for the orienteering and the rest of the week was spent running/falling through snow covered forests and semi-frozen marshes. No idea how far I went - most of the time I was lost!