I find this both exciting and quite scary!
I will compete in my first 5 miler of the year on Sunday at St. Andrews.
Several people have asked me if I am on a special diet, probably because I have lost between 20-24lbs. The truth is that I eat a lot. I eat lots of good stuff, as Michael, my husband, is a great cook but I also eat all the stuff that runners should probably not eat e.g. fish and chips, pizza, Kentucky fried chicken, need I go on. I can already see my dietician friends cringing! Being English, I do drink vast quantities of tea, not the green stuff but the black. I am also partial to a glass of homemade wine. I have become quite a connoisseur in the wine making department since moving here to Canada and being absolutely stunned at the amazingly high price of alcohol!
I digress. So if it is not the food, what has caused the weight loss? It is what I am callin the 'Cindy and Sue diet’! I started running with my pals Cindy and Sue last Fall and you know that saying ‘If it doesn’t kill you it will make you stronger’? Well, I am still here, but only just! They are both fast runners and they run hills, all the time. I had avoided hills in training which is probably why I could never run up one in a race. Running with Cindy and Sue I had to not only run up loads of hills but at a fast pace too. I had to try and keep up with them as I had no idea how to get back to their house (where I had left my car) if I didn’t! This was one of their ploys to make me run faster. As soon as it looked like I might actually remember a route and so be able to find my way back to my car, they changed the route.
That is one reason why I am now running so much faster and lighter. The main positive for me though is that Cindy and Sue have become such good mates and I will always be thankful for Sue’s original invite to go for a run with them!
Not content with seeing the weight start to drop off, they then introduced me to Boot Camp, run by coach extraordinaire Brenda Guitard. I have been attending this weekly torture for about 5 months now, I think. The exact amount of time is a bit blurry due to the pain inflicted on my body. Still this pain is obviously good for my running and in some masochistic way, I enjoy it. I must do, as I return week after week. So a big thank you to Brenda.
I will finish for now but will return. Talk soon!
