Made you look 😂 It's OK, this is not about bras, and is suitable for gentlemen too 😊
A quick catch-up! Hope you are all feeling well. Myself I've just come down with a cold (thank you, swimming pool!), so am feeling a bit grotty 😣 But never mind 😊😊
Good luck to Alissum in her Half this weekend, hope you keep warm!!! Go and give her a shout over on Squeak's Pom Pom post if you haven't already:
There's a couple more half marathoners in there this weekend - looking forward to more reports!
I've been doing a fair bit of thinking about race final preparation - Linda spotted me on Strava musing about changes to the taper part of the plan. My conclusion is that we are fine with what we've got, although if you should fancy keeping a long run in your plan (instead of reducing it to 10K as in some of the plans) in the week before your event it won't do any harm.
Be sure to take a couple of days to rest and relax before your race.
I've also been thinking about SLEEP.
It's very important to get enough sleep always, but it will also really make a positive difference to your running. It's not a very nice thing to say though, don't you think? If we're worrying about lack of sleep it just makes it that much harder to make it happen!!
When I'm having trouble sleeping here's a couple of things that have been helping me:
★ An app that plays relaxing sounds. I have one called "Relax Rain", which I like so much I actually paid for it 😄 If I wake up and my thoughts start going crazy, I plug in 'Morning Rain' - my favourite sound on the app - and it really helps!
★ An eye mask. I've not had too much luck with these to date, but I have recently found one that I like! It cuts out all light without irritating me, and I find it oddly soothing. As a bonus it is purple, and it looks a bit like a bra for the face 😄 What's not to like?
Any more rest and relaxation tips?
Happy running, all!
roseabi xx
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roseabi
Ultramarathon
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I take myself to a favourite happy place... usually it is a little secret beach, where I go skinny dipping, on the Llyn Peninsula... I am swimming, through clear, calm sea water in the bay, through long golden fronds of seaweed.. sunlight dappling and warm on my back..Wow.... feeling relaxed now
Loving the purple face bra too !!! xx
PS
Do I need to do the full 21K before the day.. or will I be okay to leave the last 1K for the day...just a weird thing of mine... ?
Yes, it's absolutely fine to wait until your race to run the full distance - in fact it's very exciting! xxx
Some versions of my plan have a shorter final long run (10k) a week before race day but it is fine to go longer on that run if people wish to. I will edit the post 😊
Thanks roseabi hope your feeling better soon I read every night it never fails to send me off the only thing is I have to re-read a page the following night because can't remember what happens 😊
I wonder how many of us love purple? I really do... I would like new purple leggings for my first HM ..but feel I need to wear my first favourite ones.. which are sort of purple-ish!
Christmas Day in a country that is 97% non-Christian back in the days before widespread access to the outside world can be a depressing time.
You spend the morning wandering around it's Capital with a German who is equally morose and while you both couldn't be said to be "religious" or wishing you were home - well, it is a day that reminds you that your life really isn't all that normal or filled with "Chestnuts roasting round an open fire"
You are also -though you don't realise it -accumulating the kind of physical and mental stress that will eventually throw your life into sheer chaos.
And, apart from everything else batshit crazy going on -Insomnia.
An hour or two of continuous sleep a night at best.
So, not really fish out of water so much as minnows in a Piranha tank, you and your equally oblivious buddy are wandering around in your mental twilight zone while physically in an environment that "should have" seen us mugged at best, more permanently inconvenienced at worse but thinking we were just 'a bit bored, a tiny bit missing back home for Christmas".
In the space of three hours, we had two "altercations" with the locals - a gang of stroppy youths trying our metal in a tea shack and two boatmen trying to shake us down halfway across the river that divided the city.
That rather memorable episode saw an enraged German nearly tip us all into the filthy waters when he almost overbalanced the rowboat that was tippy enough without a borderline Tutonic Berserker taking exception to a pathetic attempt by a bunch of river rats to intimidate the foreign Infidels halfway across the wide and swift flowing estuary
Having got to the other side not only safe but dry, Harald and I continued on our aimless wandering.
Here's how shell shocked we were - without even realising it.
I'd seen the steeple of a church from the boat before things had gone prar-shaped. In that place it stood out. So, bored and curious we navigated our way to the alley it was on.
Obviously, it had seen better days. A remanent from the days when the Sun never set on the British empire. Front doors looked like they hadn't been unlocked in a century, the railing around the patch of ground surrounding it sagging and missing portions.
We made our way through one of the gaps and circled the building. At the rear there was a clear glass ground level window so we looked in.
Now, I'm not being funny or dramatic when I say that if I'd been on my own I would forever since think I dreamed it and forgot it was only a dream and not something that actually happened, but it did. Harald was there also.
Peering through the window, what we saw was a rather startled looking elderly white man sitting at a table eating a meal.
Bearing in mind that there literally were MAYBE as many as three hundred Westerners at that time living in an Asian city of millions and that we all more or less clustered in a tiny area of the city many many miles and across several divides at the opposite side....well, my first reaction was akin to hearing the violin screeching in "Psycho". It was just FAR too bizzare a scene.
And what did myself and Harald and this completely unexpected apparition do?
Simply froze, stared at each other from opposite sides of the glass for about thirty seconds - and then Harald and I simply walked away in total shock.
Imagine if you were at lunch some day and you saw a blue Unicorn in your garden - that's how surreal the whole thing seemed...
I never found out who or what in heck the man was, some kind of Missionary no doubt but either truly protected by his God or so stark raving insane it protected him in that corner of that environment. I'll never know - but it still, even as I write this - completely overawes me that anyone would bury themselves where he was.
Anyway - Harald and I continued our trek aimlessly. We didn't even conjecture about the man wed seen, it was just another layer of incomprehensibly on top of the complexity we were occupying at that time and place.
Then we saw a Buddhist Temple.
Christians accounted for less than (official figures) 0.5% of the population (in reality far less) and Buddhists not much more, so we kind of felt almost a brotherly identification with the Monk that was manning the door.
Over we went and Namastes exchanged, an invitation to enter was proferred and gratefully accepted.
A few minutes later saw us sitting with the Khenpo (Abbot) sipping tea and conversing through an interpreter.
I learned two things that day (apart from the fact that no matter where you are in the world and whatever the circumstances there are always good people there too somewhere)
Life is precious.
"Even the Cockroach will run when you try to stamp on it"
And
"Brother John - you are walking in twilight even at Noon. When you go to your rest tonight, contemplate on being in a big blue egg".
After about a week getting the hang of surrounding myself in an imaginary giant blue egg, I started being able to sleep deeply and continuously for the first time in many months - and over thirty years later,it still works.
Harald went to Nepal a few months later and we lost touch in those pre-internet days. If anyone knows a Harald Weber from Frankfurt, white male approx. 6'4" and in his sixties by now - let me know
And that, dear Abby, is the true story of a Christmas Day long ago and how he learned to sleep through the night.
I read just before sleeping. I can usually only get through a few pages before I am nodding off. Hope you feel better soon Abi! The purple works for me!
Haha. Made me smile. Nothing like lying there knowing that a good sleep is really important, to guarantee restlessness! I'm a slave to the face bra on a long flight - the kids hate it, but maybe if I get a purple one they'll cope better ...
Glad to hear I can still do a 10k next Saturday - 100k for March was a tad ambitious given I'm taking this week off; if you'd said that run should go I would be struggling to make the distance 😀😀😀. I have deliberately left my trainers at home for this week and am suffering separation anxiety - especially as there's no snow in resort, the paths are clear 😥
Lol, I still haven't managed to make it clear! I meant that it would be OK to run another long run in the last week instead of reducing it to 10k (as in some of the plans), but then someone thought I meant it wasn't OK not to run 21k before the race 😂😂😂 I'll try editing it again...
Ooh sorry. I'd been on the wine when I read it! I'm definitely not doing another 21k at that point, but good to know it could be a bit longer if it feels good.
I am having problems staying asleep lately. I wake in the night and the thoughts are coming thick and fast and in no time I'm wide awake! One thing that works for me is getting up and reading until I feel sleepy. But I have also downloaded two apps (free trials for both) that read you a story to get you off to sleep, which is quite nice. Bedtime stories for adults! Calm is a meditation app with a section of bedtime stories. Audible is a spoken word app - you can choose a book and set a time for it to close down, hopefully by which time you are asleep.
Hmm... audio books are very nice but they don't get me off to sleep! Can't beat a real paper book for bringing on the yawns... got to ditch the tech and get old-fashioned! 😊
My husband sarcastically had me a black eye mask made when I was in the habit of being a dirty stop-out, and being hungover on a weekend after yet another bender with my work colleagues 😎, and I couldn’t stand facing the cold light of day . I still have it. It’s very nice 😁
Since I gave up boozing, and took up running, I can sleep for England 💤 😃. I pick up my book for a read but I barely get to the bottom of the page before dropping off 💤. I don’t eat late, and not drinking alcohol I think helps
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Half Marathon Improvement Plan
