NSPCC Half Marathon - Milton Keynes

10 days to go before the half marathon. There seems to be a good range of participants taking place so far. 63 of the Redway Runners (i'm one of them), the mother of one of my 5 year old son's friends and to top it all my guitar teacher (Ivan). Ivan's never run a race of this distance before so for the next week or so the Student becomes the teacher and vice-versa. I wonder if the owner of my local fish and chip chop (Steve) will be running? We both crossed the finish line of the MK Marathon at the same time but oblivious to who the other person was.

Triathlons

I've not said to myself (yet) "I think I could do that!", with regards to a triathlon. To be honest i'm pretty sure I couldn't. Running, well that would be a piece of cake, cycling would be a nice time as I love cycling (although I 'd need to get a new bike). However, it seems that most events require 1500m swimming.

Now there-in lies my problem. If I wanted to enter I would have so much work to do to get my swimming up to scratch. I can swim and i've got some stamina but to go a whole mile is something else. I think it's the issue about breathing, i.e. if your head is in the water you can't. I know the idea is to roll so your head is out of the water but what with everything else going on, at speed breathing for me is something that just gets in he way and to keep it going for 1 mile or lots of minutes.

I've looked at training and drills and i'm sure I could improve, but to go a whole mile, non-stop seems like a huge undertaking. Respect to those who can do it.

All that said, 2 years ago I might have said something similar about running Marathons.

Maybe my next goal should be a specific cycling event?, that would be the easier discipline to get to grips with the "London to Paris 24" looks fun. That would give me loads of time to work on the swimming.

Running 26 miles, done and could do it again. Cycling 300 miles in 24 hours, doesn't seem too much to worry about. Swimming 1 mile, how can such a short distance be such a hurdle, enough to make me think twice or even 3 times, just 1 mile that's all, it's crazy.

Running in the rain

I think I can count on one hand the number of days so far this year that i've run in sunny weather. OK, so it's only the end of June but it hasn't been good. Last Thursday I actively went out in dismal weather, heavy rain and strong winds and oddly it felt quite normal. Last night there seemed to be a little sun peeking through after significant rain during the day so I took the chance.

As it happens, by the time I got out the dark clouds were back and after an hour the thunder and heavy rain returned.