Disneyland Paris Half Marathon

After last year’s runDisney Wine and Dine Half Marathon that ended up being a 7 mile run instead of 13, I did my sums and decided that Adam and I could do the inaugural half marathon at Disneyland Paris in September 2016.  I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun.  The only downside being that my husband will probably be away working so only Adam and I are booked on the trip😦

Today, I finally did the last thing which I needed to get done/booked before we go so I can now relax and not panic, well not much anyway, until September.

So, I have booked the Disneyland Paris hotel, the Eurostar (from London to Disneyland Paris), the hotel in London for the day before Disneyland Paris and for the day we return from Disneyland Paris, trains to and from London (so happy that if you register with Virgin Trains you can book your tickets up to 6 months in advance rather than the usual 12 weeks).  I have also bought our half marathon entry and tickets to the inaugural party at Walt Disney Studios.  I’m so excited!  The amount Adam keeps talking about it, I think he’s excited too – I had to tell him so that I can get him out running/training for it.

One thing which is different about this run is that unlike other events where you can sign a waiver, under French Law, you have to get a Medical Certificate signed by your doctor to say that you are fit to enter the race.  I finally organised the Medical Certificates for Adam and me and picked them up today.  They are now uploaded to the registration site and we are ready to go.

Now we just need to put in the miles and the time in training for it.  At least we still have over 4 months to go🙂

I managed to get a longer run than I anticipated this morning due to forgetting to pick up the Medical Certificates yesterday.  I was planning on running a 3km loop but had a phone call (which I didn’t answer) when I was half way round.  I looked at the caller id which came up with “No Caller ID” – when my doctors surgery calls it comes up with that – which made me remember I needed to pick up the Certificates.  So, I decided I’d extend my run and run to the doctors surgery.  I’d done 4km of consistent running, no walking, by the time I got to the doctors so decided to pause my Garmin and then restart it when I got going again.  I ended up with a, not quite constant, run of 5.55km in 36:15!  It’s not the time or the distance that I’m happy with (well, I am because it’s the fastest I’ve done for a while) but more the fact that, apart from the stop at the doctors, I ran without any walk breaks for over 35 minutes😀

Bring on the York 10K – yes, we’ve entered that again – and the Disneyland Paris Half Marathon.  We may add the Yorkshire 10 mile if they do it as part of the Yorkshire Marathon again.

Walking, lots of walking

This past weekend, the sun finally shone and was warm enough for me to take off my hoodie and agree to go for a long walk on Sunday with my husband and son.  It was lovely.

We took a picnic and walked from home down to the river.  We then walked along the river path to Bishopthorpe and then on towards Acaster Malbis.  We stopped short of Acaster Malbis and crossed over the bridge to have our lunch.

After lunch we walked from Naburn to Fulford where we stopped off at the Designer Outlet so I could go to the loo, before carrying on to Milennium Bridge to get an ice cream from the Two Hoots ice cream boat.  The queue was really long, we waited 30 minutes, but it was worth the wait for a blueberry ice cream – yum! (the photos of ice cream and the ice cream boat are from Friday when it wasn’t as busy)

I actually remembered to start, and stop, my Garmin for our walk and, in total, we walked 18km in 3 hours 32 minutes!  No wonder my feet were sore!

In other news, Adam and I ran/walked at parkrun for the 3rd week in a row🙂  This week I beat him, mainly because he decided he’d had enough after 3.5km and decided to walk while I kept running.  I finished in 34:10 which is the fastest time since coming back so I’m happy with that.  We also increased the running interval to 2 minutes 30 seconds.  We won’t be at parkrun next week due to another commitment and the horses are using the racecourse the week after but we’ll be back at York parkrun for their 200th event on 28th May😀

Virtual Running – Run Blog Hop

This Month’s Blog Topic

Spring Marathon Season has arrived! For this month’s blog hop we’d like you to share a post about your marathon experiences. Whether you are a seasoned marathoner, or you are training for your first 26.2 miles, or even if you’ve never run a marathon in your life but have a story to share, then share it here – we’d love to hear from you!

Well, I’ve never run a marathon, nor am I planning to.  Then again, I said that 10K was far enough for me and I’d never to a half marathon either, so you never know.  I think it is unlikely that I will ever run a marathon though purely because I know that I don’t have the time to put in the miles that you need to do to be able to complete the marathon.  Training for a half marathon is hard enough when I have to find a time that both Adam and I can do as he can’t go out to do the runs on his own.  Before the 10 mile and half marathon (which turned into a quarter marathon) last year we did get into a good routine of running after college but that was before the clocks went back and the dark nights set in.  Also, we never actually ran more than 10km in training.

If you want to read about the York 10 Mile, which we somehow managed to complete with only 9km as our furthest training run and 4x 10K events or the runDisney Wine and Dine Half Marathon which turned into an 11km (7 mile) run instead of 13.1 miles, click on the links.  They were both great events to be part of and I would definitely do the York 10 Mile and a runDisney event again.  Who knows, when Adam finishes college and we can plan holidays during term time we may have to start planning our Disney trips around runDisney events.  Think my husband may have something to say about that though.

TheTraining for the 2016 Events Has Started

I finally got round to starting my running training for the running events which Adam, and I, want to do this year.  We are both doing parkrun and I am doing an extra run, or two, during the week.  I went on to myasics.co.uk and created a running plan for the Disneyland Paris Half Marathon at the end of September based on never having run before.  I chose this option as Adam and I didn’t run at all for near enough 3 months and Adam finds time very tight after college to go out running.  Also, our 10K events aren’t until July so we’ll increase his running after half term and increase it again when he finishes college at the end of June.  Anyway, because I chose the option of starting from scratch, the first few weeks of runs are 1-2 miles at 16 minute mile pace which is what he does to walk to college.

At the moment, as well as the half marathon, we are only planning to run a couple of 10K events.  York 10K on 7th August – I’ve done every York 10K since they started in 2009 so I can’t miss it.  The Great Yorkshire Run is moving from Sheffield at the end of September to Harrogate on 24th July so we are looking at maybe doing that one too.  Adam is also wanting to enter the R U Taking the P? run on Father’s Day.  As his dad won’t be here that weekend, he’ll be running it himself – his first official solo event – as it is a men only event.  I may enter on of the Race for Life events the following week but I haven’t decided yet.  If the York 10 Mile returns with the Yorkshire Marathon, we will also run that too as we really enjoyed it last year.

We went to parkrun yesterday and it was great.  The puddles had cleared so no soggy feet this week.  It was cold and windy though, but the sun was shining so that made it bearable😉  I increased our running intervals to 90s with a 60s walk break and we managed it very well.  Adam was still talking to me all the way around so I know he’s doing OK.  With about 350m to go, Adam decided to he was going to make a run for the finish line.  He knows that if he wants to beat me and not have me catch him on the line, as I did last week, he has to make a long run for home.  I think he must have overtaken about 8 or 9 people in that last 350m, I overtook 4, to finish in 35:07.  I finished in 35:26, over a minute and a half faster than last week and Adam was almost 2 minutes faster.  Think it’ll be back to 2 minute run intervals next week🙂

Parkrun finish on 16th April 2016 (not this week): Why does Adam look like he’s just finishing a stroll in the park and I’m trying so very hard?!?  I just caught him on the line.

Finally back to parkrun

It’s been a while, and I apologise, that thing called Life got in the way.  After the very soggy parkrun in January, Adam and I only managed one more (on 30th January) and then didn’t run at all until this morning.

After the very wet feet which led to white, numb toes and fingers, I decided that maybe running when there was a chance of having to run through a lot of big puddles wasn’t a good idea.  So, not a lot of running on Saturday mornings.  On the other Saturdays, either Adam was sick, I was sick or I had to be at work by 10 am instead of 11 am.  Whatever the reason, we haven’t run in over 10 weeks.  What? 10 weeks?!?  That’s ridiculous!

Anyway, this week, I decided that we were going back regardless of the weather and the possibility of huge puddles across the track – there were 3 big puddles which you had to run through or pick your way through the mud, we chose to get very wet rather than very muddy.  Fortunately, the sun was shining this morning so it was fairly easy to get out of bed and, more importantly, get Adam out of bed.  I’m sure Adam would have tried to stay in bed for an extra half hour if he could but, as he really wants to run the Great Yorkshire Run in July, the York 10K in August and the Disneyland Paris Half Marathon in September, we had to get back out there.

As we haven’t run, at all, for over 2 months, I decided to take us back to the beginning and do run:walk intervals of 1:1.  I knew it would be easy and slow but I wanted to give Adam something very manageable.  However, at the start there were so many people, and 2 big puddles to go through, that the first run minute was actually a walk (to get to the start line!), so we ran for 2 minutes to get us back on the right intervals – I can’t have my watch telling me that it is a “walk” when it’s a run or vice versa.

After the initial 500m or so, the pack of runners had spread out, especially as we were taking walk breaks after every minute of running.  The first km was just under 8 minutes but we managed to speed up for the other 4 km to finish in just under 37 minutes.  Not bad considering we haven’t done any training for 10 weeks.

I really enjoyed this morning’s run and am looking forward to next week when I’m going to increase the run interval to 1m30s🙂  Slowly but surely, we’ll get back to our 5:1 intervals and I may even get back to being able to run the full 5K when training on my own.

Journal Jar – Favourite Animal? Why?

What is your favourite animal?  Tell why.

Oh! This is another hard one.  I have a few favourite animals but I really don’t know why I like them.

I’ve always loved dolphins, I don’t know why but I always have.  More recently it’s been because of the evidence which shows that they interact very well with disabled people.  Certainly, Adam enjoyed it as much as we did and interacted really well.

I also like dogs, lions, elephants, giraffes …

Journal Jar – Worst Holiday Memory

What is your worst holiday memory?

When I first read this prompt, I thought it meant holiday as in Christmas, Easter, New Year etc. and maybe it does but then I wondered if it maybe meant holiday as in vacation.  As it is an American prompt, I was probably right the first time as otherwise it would say vacation, yes?

So, I’m going to take it to mean my worst Christmas, Easter, New Year, or whatever, memory.  I’ll be honest, I don’t have any really bad holiday memories and I’m probably really scraping the barrel here but my worst holidays are the ones when my husband isn’t here or when Adam has a migraine and ends up throwing up everywhere.  To be fair though, even those occasions aren’t all that bad.

Journal Jar – Special Skills

What special skills did you learn as a child? Who taught you?

Cooking and baking – they are special skills, right?  My mum and grandma taught me to cook and bake.  They also taught me to read recipes and adapt them if necessary.  Also, to value to the recipes which have been handed down through the generations and pass them on.

My mum also taught me to swim and ride a bike.

My family taught me the importance of listening to and not judging people when they are upset and need to vent.

Dreaming BIG

As part of my businesses, I attend webinars on a regular basis.  It is so much easier to have training which you can access in your own home rather than having to travel to a training morning, afternoon, evening or day.  Don’t get me wrong, I like attending trainings where I can meet people and see the speakers face to face but having a young adult at home who needs someone in the house with him makes going to “live” trainings difficult.

Last night was the first of a new six week rolling programme and it was all about goal setting/getting.  After all, how are you going to know what you need to do within your business if you don’t know where you are going?  What do you want?  What are your dreams?  If money were no object, what do you want to do? What do you want to see?  Where do you want to go?  Who do you want to do it with?

Listening to the speaker on the webinar really got me motivated to re-visit my life goals, not just the goals which I set for this year.  I was so inspired that it took me ages to fall asleep last night thinking about my Big Dreams.  What was I thinking about?  A house, my dream house.

So, this is one of my DREAMS and, now that I am writing it down, a GOAL.  Within the next 10 years, I will have moved into a house with 3, preferably 4, bedrooms, a large kitchen with plenty of cupboard space for all my Tupperware, crockery, pans, baking supplies and electrical appliances (crock pot, Kenwood mixer, bread maker …) etc, a large living room with lots of bookshelf space for books, dvds and ornaments, a dining room – I really want a dining room again, ours is now an office as we have too much stuff with 3 businesses being run from home – a study/office room, 2 bathrooms (1 as an en-suite to the master bedroom) and a downstairs toilet, a double garage and large driveway.  I don’t need a big garden but I’d like enough space to be able to sit outside in the sun, if we ever get any in the UK.

Journal Jar – Best Subjects at School

What were  your best and worst subjects in elementary school? In middle school? In high school?

OK, this is what I get for getting my journal jar prompts from an American site.  Elementary, middle and high school?  We have infants, junior and senior or primary and senior.  Just need to do a quick bit of research…

According to Wikipedia – Education in the US, elementary school is the same as primary school in the UK, from 5-11 or 12, middle school (or junior high) is from 11-14 and high school is from 14-18.

So, here are my answers to today’s prompt:

My best subjects in primary school were Maths, English and Geography.  My worst subject was definitely History, I could never remember all the dates of the Kings and Queens of England!

My best subjects in what we now know as KS3, were still Maths, English and Geography but I also enjoyed German.  My worst subject was still history and I gave History up when I chose my subjects for GCSE.

So, on to the high school age group.  This is actually quite hard as in the UK we split high school into the GCSE part – up to age 16 – and then, if you wanted, you can leave and go to work or you can continue to A-Levels.  My best subjects at GCSE were English and German, I also enjoyed Maths and Geography.  My worst subject was Physics, in fact I took the GCSE exam twice!  For A-Level, I only took English Literature, Geography and German and didn’t do very well at any of them.  I loved Geography though and would have gone to do a degree in Geography if I’d got the grades I needed.

Which were your best and worst subjects at school?  Do you like them now?
I actually quite like history now that I can choose which parts I want to learn about.  I still don’t know the dates for the Kings and Queens of England though😉