2020 Books

This year, one of my challenges is to read more.  Growing up I always had my nose in a book, my love of reading was discovered was when I brought a secondhand Jackie Collins novel; Hollywood Wives I think it was. We were on a camping holiday, I was around 13/14, I can't quite remember where but we happen across a flea market and looking through a books stall the glossy front cover attracted my eye and on reading the opening page the book was for me! 

Elaine Conti awoke in her luxurious bed in her luxurious Beverly Hills mansion, pressed a button to open the electrically controlled drapes, and was confronted by the sight of a young man clad in a white T-shirt and dirty jeans pissing a perfect arc into her mosaic-tiled swimming pool.

Apparently, I spent the rest of the holiday with my nose in that book from walking down the street, at the dinner table, in the car car and by the pool!

From that moment on I've always been a fan of trashy novels, romcom, crime fiction and the odd autobiography, most of all I mainly like read novels with a strong female lead. In the past, I would devour books at a rapid rate, then my days got filled with other stuff like work, study, TV and running, which meant  the reading took a backseat.

Whilst physically reading books stopped when I took up running, I became a fan of audiobooks and found a new way to get my fiction fix; as the miles flew by so did the books. Many blissful miles have been run,  thanks to Stephen Fry I read (listened) to all the Harry Potter books, then there was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, a number of Daniele Steeles, The Long Run, and the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch....a full list of my audiobooks can be found here....but I soon found that I needed to mix up my listening material and started to mix up the audiobooks with music and many podcasts, slowly the books fell away and it as mainly music and podcasts. 

Then the number of books listened to reduced, the number of podcasts increased and the only time for books was on holiday and boy did I get through them!! With the advent of the Kindle, it made not only transporting books but getting books instantly much easier, but the beauty of going to a physical book shop is that you see interesting covers of other books, as you pass by. In the early days of Kindle you only really got information on the authors you had read previously, hence there could be long gaps before a new title was released and my holidays coming around again! 

In late 2019 I was spending too long on my phone, scrolling through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, once bored with those I would start playing candy crush or spider solitaire and loose hours of my day and my kindle app was gathering techy dust!!

I made a decision to read more, after blowing the dust from my kindle app (trying desperately to remember my password!), I  realised that there were a couple of books that were purchased back in March that had not read yet, their purchase most have coincided with our return from holiday! 

So like most good training plans, it's about creating a good habit, late last year I committed to reading a chapter of each book before going to bed each night and asked Twitter to recommend some books for me to have qued up for 2020.  

My 2020 challenge is live, I have deleted both Candy Crush and Spider solitaire and aim to read at least 20 books in 2020.  If you have a book you think I would like, then drop me a tweet or comment on this post and I'll add it to the list, another aim along with reading the books is to broaden my tastest into other area and genre. To keep everyone updated on my progress there will be the odd blog post and a dedicated page Book Club 2020 page, with a little bit about each book and a link to amazon. 

2019 - it’s a wrap!

QUICK STATS: run 1,565miles, bike 477miles, swim 59,230 yards. Races 7 

parkruns 30, parkrun volunteering 25, different parkruns 8 and fastest parkrun 23:57

January-  Ran the New Year's day parkrun double at Hanley and the Wammy; joined Derwent Running Club as a Social member, to help with my Marathon Training when it starts. We had the annual Family New Year's day meal and realising how much my nephews are growing up and a lovely birthday surprise weekend in Manchester for a cheeky parkrun and a visit to the Manchester Beer Festival….oh and how could I forget a haircolour change!! 

February - My marathon training began, my long runs were getting long!! WE had a girls night out to Bingo again, unfortunately, our luck had run out but we had a great evening catching up and it was the month of my best clean joke for a long time!  "I had a hen who could count her own eggs…..she was a mathemachicken"

March - The long runs keep coming and the aim is to run 18 miles before our week long holiday in Mexico, which I manage not once but twice so I could go away safe in the knowledge that 1 week of lower mileage would not hurt the training too much. Had a lovely week away in Mexico, we were testing out a few theories this holiday..was Mexico too far for a week's holiday, how was Cancun compared to Playa de Carmen and could I pack for a weeks holiday with just hand luggage! The holiday was both informative and successful in terms of our theories, the responses were; yes, no Playa is nicer and yes!! So no more waiting at the carousel of doom!

April - Early in the month means that I was getting into the tough weeks and my longest runs were coming up with a 20 one week and 21 mile a week later running to my parents' house on a very hot bank holiday Sunday!   It didn’t get any easier but knowing they were behind me was a comfort and that my miles would start to decrease helped to lift my spirits in the final mile. We decorated and swapped rooms around in the house, the carpet that had been down since we moved in finally went and both rooms got spruced up!  Our collective weight loss is becoming more and more noticeable and we had to take 8 bags of clothes to the charity shop!!

May -Can only mean one thing Marathon Month, but before the Marathon, we had the Market Drayton 10k and I managed a very respectable time of 50:29, I had secretly hoped for sub 50 but that wasn’t my A race so I let it go and carried on with the taper which should have been easy at a lower miles however it certainly didn’t feel like that.  Then before we know it were heading up to bonny Scotland and finally the marathon is here! 4hours and 3 minutes later and 26.2 odd miles and I crossed that finish line and yet again vowed to never run another marathon again…but I still wanted to run

June - After all the build-up, miles and hours put into training I was able to diversify my training again and with a Pool based sprint triathlon scheduled for September I needed to get back in the pool again que the 5:30am starts and being in the pool for 6am!

July - we are in the holiday season and we were heading back up to Scotland first to go to Rewind 80festiveal in Scone with another cheeky parkrun tourism and the commencement of our Scotland road trip in the campervan, we visited some lovely places and I got to swim in a Lido which was another first for me!

August -  The Hanley park renovations have finished and we could finally run the course 2B and start to use the bandstand again, shame they never did put the sides on it so we could use it as a shelter during the occasion wet Saturday parkruns….final bank holiday of the year before Christmas was an excellent opportunity catch up with friends and walk/wander and stagger the  Hartshill beer mile 

September- after much discussion about house renovations we decided to that wanted to update the garden and make it a haven to come home too and spend time in during the summer months (should we actually get some nice weather) so our GRAND DESIGNS garden work started and finished! I ran the Great North Run again and had a blast this is one of the best half marathons and one everyone should run and I closed out the month with the North West Sprint Triathlon.

October- We had a quick running weekend away to run the Bilbao half marathon and if it hadn't have been long I'm sure that I would have got a sub 1:50 but that is Brexit for you…also the realisation of the over the last couple of months starts to dawn on me that my running has really improved recently, my times are coming down which is great !

November- There was a brilliant weekend away with the girls to Wales and we saw our first snow of Winter 2019, we participated (very hungover) in Pont y Bala parkrun  and I finished in a very respectable 5th, to be fair there were only 24 people and we made up a third of them! I managed to actually get a 10 mile PB at the Derby 10k which I was really pleased with, but then got injured right after it!! Oh and I finish my contract in Nottingham and start to look for my next contact as well as updating my project management skills

December is all about going out with friends, catching up with friends and spending time with the ones you love! Oh and I ran my fastest parkrun in 6 years!!

Heres to 2020 and whatever not only the new year but also the new decade holds :) 

parkrun comeback

The long and short of this post is that after the Derby 10 mile PB I got injured because I'm stupid and not invincible!! There has been a very painful sports massage, rest days, crosstraining and now I'm back running-ish! 

Two weeks ago, I finally got Sean to run our second local parkrun The Wammy, which is a relatively flat and fast parkun, at long out and back.  The only other time I have run here was on New Years Day as part of my NYD double, so this was my first opportunity to run this since I had got some speed back in my legs. 

The Wammy is flat and fast, the place to go for good run time and my running buddies asked me the night before if I was going to go for it.  But with being injured recently, unsure where my form was at and not wanting to put the pressure on myself, the sandbagging excuses came out "nah just going to go for a normal run".

After a brief chat with parkrun RD, we headed off for the start and then we were off......things were going well my legs felt fresh and springy so my thoughts of a parkrun time with a 24 at the start would be a nice way to finish out the year….these were fleeting and as the lactate started to build were replaced with “a low 25 would also be very good”. The course, after the turn around point, is slightly downhill and once again thoughts returned to 24🤔.  

As my watch beeped the 2nd mile, I tried desperately to work it out what pace was needed to for a 24 something finish, but the lactate build up was making maths difficult 😳 The way back felt longer than the way out and the finish felt a long way off. Looking at my watch I had less than half a mile to go and still I couldn’t work it out, every time I did it came out at a 23 at the start and that had to be wrong!!

Then I saw that fantastic finish line and surged for it, crossing the line, trying not to collapse, throw up and stopping my watch all at the same time! the result was officially 23:57 my third ever fastest parkrun! 

A great way to finish the year…..and now I am injured again :( so I am back spinning