I really don't know what is happening to this year, it's flying in waaaay to fast!!The clock's 'spring' forward tonight which means that Summer won't be too far away and we get the pleasure of light mornings and long light evenings and I feel so much better :-)
So what have we been up to since I last posted early February? Work has been stressful and pressured so every non-working moment has been spent either running, training or sleeping trying to forget about it... it's settled down a bit in the past few weeks but it's still not the happy place it used to be :-(
We have been to Falkirk parkrun most Saturday mornings, either to run or volunteer, and I have successfully run all the way round the course, and conquered Heartbreak Hill - at the same time I got a new PB by 5minutes so that was a good morning :-)
Apart from that we have been training, both for a couple of half marathons and for our upcoming adventure at the Hoka Highland Fling - I am running a relay leg and John is doing the whole distance solo! (53miles)
We went to Paris for the Semi-marathon de Paris on 4 March and both had good runs, we both got new PBs! It was a very well organised event with about 23000 runners and we had perfect weather conditions so there was no excuse for not doing well :-)
2 weeks later on March 18 we ran our local race, the Alloa Half Marathon, once again we had fantastic race conditions, sunshine and barely a wind along the notorious hillfoots road, once again we both PB'd :-) we had a number of friends running and everyone did really well so all in all it was a great day out.
On Thursday I had the exciting experience(!) of having an MRI scan on my left leg, what a racket the machine makes! John also had the day off on Thursday and so he decided he was going to do a 30mile long run along the Forth & Clyde canal from Grangemouth to Clydebank, this meant that he could meet me at the hospital. It was the best day of the year so far, no wind and wall to wall sunshine, warm enough for running but not too hot. He covered the 31.5 miles comfortably and when I met him at the end, he looked like he'd run 10miles or so not 31.5! He is hopefully in a good place with his training, he managed another 12miles yesterday...
I had a day off yesterday and wanted to go and conquer Conic Hill, as I was a bit nervous about it and it's my relay leg on the Highland Fling, so we set off in a freezing cold wind from Drymen, and ran/walked to the top in 1h 30m. John turned back then and went to get the car so that I could continue and he'd meet me at the finish. I felt strong so decided to try and continue all the way to Rowardennan which meant I would have done the whole leg, as when we'd gone to run the Balmaha to Rowardennan route a in February and I had not had a good time, my leg was really sore that day. It is an awesome run down off the hill, took me less than 30minutes to get down to Balmaha and by the time I got there the sun was shining :-)
Balmaha to Rowardennan was a much better experience than last time, still extremely hard work, with lots of climbing! I was still tired at the end and a bit sore, but not injured sore, just worked-hard sore... All in all it was a good day out, finished it tired, muddy but happy :-)
total distance was 14.29 miles, total elevation climber was 529m
