Frog tastes like....

Peloton Tread It really has been a while, so I'm pleased with 10K completed on the tread in just over 66 minutes... now I just need to double it (plus tax) and add some hill work !!!

Getting the legs ready to run again... the bike has been a massive help , but it's not the same as running - February will be our first 'race' in quite a while, and both of us need to work on speed. A couple of years ago I was introduced to the balloon ladies of Disney runs. They basically hold the perfect speed for minimum time completion - a 16 minute mile pace. This year I'm aiming to get Sam around a 10k race in front of said ladies (Working with double quad tears, so she has to take it easy). The following day, we will attempt the Princess Half Marathon if all goes well! Keep Moving Forwards.

Did a 60 minute power zone ride with Sam today - they're as tough as you make them! On a separate note, Dusty passed his intermediate dog training today with flying colors!

So I signed up for the 2020 San Fran 1/2 Marathon...then COVID decided to mess that up. It didn't stop me training though, and with the help of a Peloton bike I'm starting to show signs of fitness once again! (No, no as fit as 11 years ago!). Anyway, this sudden urge to not be unfit in my 50's has inspired Sam to join in on the fun - yes we are run(walking fast)ning again! This February , we are getting our asses around the 2022 Walt Disney Princess Half Marathon! Not only that, but we're attempting to run a 10k the day before - you know, just to warm up! I'm also still signed up for San Fran in the summer, so watch this space and maybe I'll post again before next year!

So.... accidentally clicked a link on fb that brought me to this old blog - kind of appropriate as we just signed up for a half marathon.... !! With all of our injuries it's going to be a tough time, but exercise is good for you apparently.

I have to say it shows promise... don't know why, and doubt it will take on the mighty fb and win but.... it works nicely!

....but then I have been busy!! Starting to feel like we're finally settled in our new home :) Still loads to do, but exercise has found it's way back into my daily routine... maybe I can convince myself to sign up for another race!

That was a tough half-marathon. I think mainly due to the lack of training since Sam's ankle injury, and also the fact that I wasn't well. It was an all-girl marathon (hence the Princess in the title!) but Princes were also allowed to support their Princesses by running with them - what really got on my nerves was the fact that a 'Prince' won the race.... IMO he should have been disqualified! What an asshole! He must have been really pleased with himself beating the girls (by a whole 2 minutes I might add!).... okay, I think I got that out of my system! If you click here you can see the Garmin mapping of our run :)

This Sunday our Princess half-marathon event takes place - haven't found a pink shirt I like yet!! We did our final training session tonight.... I managed 13miles on the bike, 3 on the X-trainer and 1.75 on the treadmill - not bad for an hour's work!! Hopefully all will go well for us and we'll be able to add another medal to the ceiling hook (must get a stronger hook!) Oh, and I'll have the Garmin running so you can see the event mapped out :)

...it does however change where we workout on a Sunday!! Strong winds and cold (for Florida) rain took us to the Gym this morning, so I did 35mins on the bike (14miles), then the cross trainer (wasn't paying attention to the distance as I was watching Dollhouse on my iPod :) ), then topped it all off with a quick jog on the treadmill (3 miles in 35 mins).... of course as soon as we got home it stopped raining and the sun came out!!! On a side note I've lost 7lb in belly-mass in the last 2 weeks - I can see my feet again!! ;)

We put in 7.2 miles this morning... just a gentle warm-up in readiness for the Princess Half-Marathon (2 weeks today). Sam's ankle seems to have held together so all is looking AOK :D You can check our laps by clicking the link on the right - updated 22nd Feb. I had high hopes that I'd found a way of retrieving the Marathon details from the PC, but it's lost forever :( .... transfer from the Mac failed this morning, but 2 minutes later I had it working again - it's just so much easier to get things working with my Apple :P

My Garmin watch is scary !! We took the kids out for a little stroll around our neighborhood and I put the watch on to see how far it was (different to the normal 'lap' with a nice big hill for endurance) ..... well Garmin.com have just added Mac support for my watch (tried linking it to a PC and lost all the info!) and (obviously!) it quickly and easily installed and communicated...... THIS :O You can see my house from here!! You can also see that I forgot to turn it off before walking around the house for a bit !! That is a lot of detail. Needless to say, it's goodbye Nike watch, hello Garmin supercomputer :D

Well here we are in all our glory (and a lot of pain in the middle pic!) Thanks to my Garmin GPS watch (early Birthday present!) I was able to pace us to perfection.... we started out a little fast - had to pull in the reigns a little as all the newbs were a little over-zealous !!!! I noticed a few people pulling out before mile 3 with shocked looks on their faces :( ... by the halfway mark we'd managed a very respectable 3hr14m which gave us some breathing room for the 7hr cutoff time. 18 miles was our landmark - we'd not gone further than that in training... we had beaten our previous time by over an hour! I would say the last mile was probably the toughest, longest mile of our lives but the feeling at the finish line was more than overwhelming... yes, there may have been a tear or two! One of the things that motivated both of us was the crowd - hearing your name being called out by complete strangers is a little weird at first, but eventually you start to lean on the great s...

....my knees, my back, my shoulders, my head..... trouble is we haven't done it yet! I think the brain is trying to convince us to not turn up - nice try Mr. Cranium... we will be there bright and early... look for 15195 and 15196 (near the back ;) ) and wish us lots of luck.... off to bed now!!!!

This may well be my last entry before the big day (Jan 11th) ... we've done all we can now, so it's just little runs to keep the legs working. I'm nervous and excited about it - I do know that if we hadn't signed up for the full Marathon we would never have trained at all, so whether we make it or not in the alloted time (7 hours) we have both got a lot out of this (as has our sitter!!). I think the weirdest thing for me is the amount of weight I've put on!! I have been a consistent 165-170 lb. for most of my adult life... not a lot for 6'3" - I now weigh in at 195 lb. !!!! (of course it's all muscle ;) ). Hopefully that extra weight will help my endurance - at school I was the sprinter and complained about distances further than 200 Meters !!!! Anyway, wish us luck and if I get the chance I will post the results post race.... then it's off to VEGAS !!!!!!

...training when you have family visiting. It is easy eating cake though!! This week my Dad will be here with his Claire. Really looking forward to seeing them - they also like to exercise so we can get back into the swing of things. Not long to go now!! Happy Holidays :)

...as you can see under my 'little man' we've completed our goal for the month - next month's goal is 50 miles on the road (that doesn't include gym work - little man can't see me on the treadmill :( ). This Sunday we'll be trying for 18 miles which should burn off all the Turkey calories!! Happy Thanksgiving :)

...well that's what we're aiming for tomorrow. I'll be bringing my little man with me so you'll see how we did :)

Get your mind out of the gutter!! As you can see, there's a little Nike+ version of me hanging around on this webpage now... we did 10.52 miles today and I somehow managed to lose the info whilst registering to the site.... but from now on every time we run, mini-me should be animating it :) Obviously it won't take into account all the treadmill work we do during the week (not figured out how it measures yet!) so it'll only be good for our weekend runs and the Marathon !!

Well we've signed up for our first official run - it's 13K (about 8 miles) and we have to do it in 2 hours 10 mins. I'm running on my own tomorrow (Sam's in Geneva) so I'll give it a go to see if I can make it in time. For more info click here .