The most wonderful time of the year...

Christmas 2012 now behind us and Father Christmas was very generous to me this year. I am now the owner of a new pair trainers and some new training gear (pictured below). Over the festive period I have been speaking with a few of people who have offered me help with my training, Michael George has been advising me about training routes (and also when the local walking events are taking place). Richard Creer has offered to join me during some training sessions which will be a great help. My sister, Jo Healey has also offered to train with me and hopefully she'll enter the Parish Walk this year and attempt to finish it (she was annoyed at me for not giving her a name check in a previous post about my fantastic back up crew in 2011, so hopefully she'll be happy now). Just want to say thank you to anyone who has helped me so far and who has offered to help in the coming months!

With a new year looming, I'm going to make my resolution to train hard... starting from the 2nd of January of course because New Year's Day lunch at my mother-in-law's can't be passed up and I won't be able to move after that!

The week between Christmas and new year is always one that involves a lack of exercise and a whole lot of eating! Left over turkey, Tesco party food and the tin of Cadbury's Roses (which seems to be bottomless) are the order of the week and I'm unable to turn it down. I have not visited the scales in my bathroom for a couple of weeks and don't intend to until later on next week (fingers crossed that I've not passes the 12 stone mark!).

I hope you all have a fantastic new year and its a prosperous one for all the 2013 Parish Walkers!

The best of intentions...

This last week I recieved a slap on the wrist... my training was postponed due to a number of reasons:

1) My daughter's 4th birthday
2) Babysitting (although I think that when they are your own kids, it's called parenting?!)
3) Wet weather
4) Christmas night out

All of the above are valid reasons for not training, but only two of them are good ones (I'm sure you can work out that it's reasons 1 and 2 that I'm talking about).

Rain is not good, whilst it helps the flora and fauna to grow, it causes me to be miserable and usually cold! I am yet to be involved in a Parish Walk where the weather has turned to rain for a long period of time (touch wood), but if I did, I would have to question how long I would last. Whilst I know I'm not going to melt when I come into contact with water, I hate the feeling of having wet trainers and this is sure to lead to blisters (which I hate even more!). So I'm putting my request in to Michael Fish, Wincey Willis and all of the other meteorologists out there... please show a big sunshine on 22nd and 23rd June 2013?!

Christmas night's out can be hazardous to any training regime, especially as it can cause you to miss out on more than one days worth of training (well that was certainly the case for me)! We now have 6 more sleeps until Christmas, and one more Christmas night out before December 25th, so it might be worth postponing any plans I have to clock up some miles until after Santa has visited?

I'd like to wish all who read my blog a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The First of Many...

I went out for my first training walk on Saturday and am happy to report that my ankle held up to the seven miles, even if I was slightly slower than expected (my plan is to get the miles in first and worry about my pace later). I took the picture above as I was coming past Nobles Park to prove that even in December the weather can be nice enough for everyone to get out there and get some miles under their belts!

Balancing my training and home life is something that is very important. Weekend training shouldn't be too much trouble, but with having 2 children it's difficult to get out training on a week night until after 8:00pm as I work all day and only get about 2 hours of 'family time' in the evening before my daughters go to bed. Juggling family life and training will prove challenging over the coming months and I'm sure that others will be in this same position... I just hope your spouse/partner is as understanding as mine!