we went to Don’s house across the border in France for the weekend – it’s always a great escape and a weekend still feels like a holiday. Eliza and I went for a run on Sunday, but first I checked out a route in the car. It was a hilly 4km almost exactly, from Don’s front door and back.

It was a nice route, the hills made it pretty hard, but the countryside was fantastic. We made fairly short work of it – Eliza said it took 20 minutes but I’m not sure if that’s accurate, it seemed longer. This is the first time I’ve done a run and known how far it is in km terms. 4km doesn’t seem that much, but with the hills I was pretty pleased with how we did.
To celebrate we returned from our run to a fry-up, the second of the weekend! You’d need to do a lot more exercise than a piddly 4km run to leave Don’s house any lighter.

It’s been grey, cloudy and drizzly the last few days which didn’t make me jump for joy at the thought of going for a run. As Jo said, we’d be useless if we lived in the UK as that’s the weather of choice for at least 6 months of the year!

In the end it was more the fact that I knew I’d be annoyed with myself if I didn’t go that finally pushed me out of the door on Tuesday. It turned out to be one of the best runs I’ve done. I’ve a route which I do which basically takes me through an industrial estate. It doesn’t sound great but it has big wide roads and very few cars, which is good. The smell of toxic glue or something when running past one or two of the buildings isn’t so good but there you go! Anyway I did my usual run but I really pushed myself, taking in some optional detours with long(ish) uphills included. It felt really good.

I haven’t any means of measuring progress* but I’m pleased with how things are going. I ran for approx 30 mins flat out, no stopping (I’ve never been into that) and including some good gradients, and I had absolutely no aches or pains the next day. I feel that I’ve passed the ‘I’m trying it out’ phase and can now say that I run without fear of sniggers from Jo – she was always dubious of my sudden conversion to the idea given that I’ve never run and always said I hated it.

* it’s my birthday in a couple of weeks and I’m hoping to get an attachment for my ipod which measures how far/fast/long you’ve run etc. Take note!

I went again on the 30th Jan and yesterday – I’m pretty sure that so far I’ve kept up with my (one and only) new years’ resolution of running at least once a week. I think I did also say I’d run the 10K in April, which in theory seems possible but talking to Eliza the other day she was talking about ramping it up to two, three, four times a week in preparation. Hmmm.. not that I wouldn’t want to, it’s finding the time.

just a quick note as I am waiting to see if Esmé is going to go to sleep (currently wide awake in her cot).

Last night was good. She woke once at 5:30, so no complaints there. Ironically I didn’t sleep as well. When she was waking 3-4 times a night my head only had to hit the pillow and I was asleep, but last night I struggled to get back after 5:30. This is partly because I’m in the thick of things with work and my head was spinning with ideas/things to etc etc.

Went running this morning with Jo – we took advantage of the fact that the in-laws are with us, making it the was the first time we’ve ever run together. It was good to get out – cold, but good for clearing the head.

went running this morning and it was a bit of a disappointment – my first solo run a few weeks back I ran down to marina and along to the beach but couldn’t manage running along the beach as well. Since then I’ve run considerable longer and further so thought I’d be able to do the beach run easily today.

As it happened I had stitch shortly after starting out which never went away which was a pain (literally). By the time I got to the beach it felt like my calves were about to cramp up so I had to stop and decided to abandon the idea of the beach front and instead walked back along the marina, to finish up running back.

I don’t know that much about running but my occasional running partner, Mateas, who is training for the marathon, just did his calves in so I figured cramping muscles whilst running isn’t a good sign!

The final stretch was better, but all in all not the best run.

I sent out an email to a bunch of friends/family telling them of my blog (a poor excuse for keeping in touch) and one thing that most people came back with is ‘where do you find time?’

The trick is to write little and often, as things happen, but even that is difficult sometimes. The longer you leave it the more it builds up into this mass of things you’ve been meaning to write down, which makes you put it off longer and it’s a vicious circle.

As it happens I’ve recently done just that, so I’m going to rattle off a few things I’ve been meaning to note down:

Esmé has been through a few changes in the last week:

• She got a high chair last weekend so now sits at the table with us
• We’ve started giving her a bottle as a supplement (not tremendously successful to date but it looks promising)
• She had her first ‘solids’ yesterday, we gave her cereal. Again not very successful but probably not helped by the fact that prior to the cereal we’ve been feeding her the horrible chalky antibiotics on a spoon so the association probably isn’t the best

Running:

I have to date kept up with my new years’ resolution and have been running at least once a week. I went out on Saturday for 45 minutes and ran further than I have previously. It was probably the first time I actually enjoyed the exercise at the time as opposed to being pleased with myself after the event.
I’ve ‘finally’ managed to buy myself a pair of running shoes and can return the trainers I’ve been borrowing to Mateas (it was getting a bit embarrassing, it’s been months now!).

I still have another post I want to add about the Corre Foc we went to on Sunday night but there’s a video to go with it so I’ll try and put it together tonight.