Will I ever reach my goal?

I’ve not been posting much recently for a number of reasons. I’ve been thinking (dreaming!) about becoming an Ironman and wondering “Will I ever reach my goal?”

Excuses, excuses

There hasn’t been much to post recently. I’ve not been exercising much and it definitely shows. I was trying to swim once a week during my lunch break, but haven’t managed it. My employer is one of those places where “natural wastage” is occurring, so the rest of us are ending up doing more. I’m running once or twice a week – distances of no more than 5km. I have managed to go on a bike recently… but it was just a Yo Bike!

(The Ironman Dublin 70.3 bag is there to remind me that I used to exercise!)

I’ve also not had as much time to blog as I’d like. After 20 months of sleep deprivation and waking every couple of hours, M has finally started sleeping a bit more… but the slightest change to her routine and I lose my entire evening, so I’m battling staying on top of housework and trying to get my garden to a reasonable state.

Where’s my blog at?

At the moment, my blog and my home look like this:

Everything started off so well, with such good intentions. It feels like I’m now at a stage where things are finished half-heartedly, if at all. Apologies!

Anyway, some people seem to think that I’m not too bad at what I do. I’m stunned to have been shortlisted in the Best Fitness Category of the Health Bloggers Community Health Blog Awards.

If you’d like to vote for me, please visit the Health Blog Awards page and scroll down until you see this:

When you click on start you need to enter your first name (or a pseudonym) and an email address. You won’t be spammed, I promise. You can then vote for whichever blogs you choose and will receive a single confirmation email.

Feeling the love for running through parkrun

I’m trying to make the most of the things that I can do and am enjoying parkrun, even though my times are terrible (and looking at them makes me feel really sad). Most weeks I’m 5 minutes slower than I was a year ago.

Whilst hacking through bramble bushes in my garden last week, I decided to listen to Free. Weekly. Timed – the parkrun podcast. I’ve listened to a couple of episodes before but figured that I might as well play them from the start. I knew I’d be in the garden for a while (and also figured that I might as well get up-to-date before the parkrun conference). Anyway, in one of their discussions, Louise Ayling explained to Vassos that there is an extension for Chrome that automatically shows how you are doing with various parkrun challenges.

For a short while, I was enjoying the therapeutic benefits of colouring in bits of paper… but that quickly turns to stress when partway through a tiny human arrives and starts grabbing your pens and pencils, so my bits of paper have been in a drawer for several months. I digress!

Here’s how I’m doing with a few challenges.

There are a lot more challenges listed, so if you’ve not looked at it, please do check it out.

Am I still a triathlete?

I may just have to let go of triathlon for a while. I failed to achieve my main goal and it’s slipping further and further from my fingertips. There are some people who can manage to coordinate a life with a small child, but I’m not one of them.

Stuart and I don’t live close enough to either of our families to be able to have on-hand babysitting for the odd evening run or cycle. Although I had intended to do a lot of things on Fridays, that’s just not worked out. Usually, my Fridays are spent walking to and from the nursery, putting away food shopping and getting on top of laundry. If anyone wonders what the cost of having a child is, I can guarantee that it’s far more expensive than triathlons. This year, the cost of nursery fees for M is £12 500!

Ordering my parkrun 250 t-shirt

Anyway, back to my love of parkrun… After completing my 250th parkrun, there was a short wait before I was able to order my milestone t-shirt. I was so excited when I received teh following e-mail:

It was good to see the option to place the order when I checked on my club progress:

How have I done at parkrun recently?

My results have been fluctuating somewhat recently. I’ve been slacking off and it shows. My main goal in the last few months has been to keep under 30 minutes (when I haven’t got M in the buggy). I definitely think I need to try harder and aim for sub 28 no matter what!

It was nice to go down to Poole parkrun as it’s an event we’d not tried before. We’d heard that it’s buggy-friendly, so we persuaded our friends Rachel and Phil to come along with their son in his buggy as well.

Poole parkrun is often described as being a ‘fast flat course’. I think it probably is a fast course for people who are fast runners who start at the front, but it is quite congested for people who have to start further back. The paths are not as wide as I had assumed they would be and there are some difficult parts to negotiate with a buggy.

I think there’s definitely scope for me to improve on my time at Poole,. However, there are too many other local events that I haven’t done yet, so it may be a while before I’m back.

Have you done any parkrun tourism recently?