Tuesday and Beyond - plus a pic of us as vampires

OK, I missed my weekend blog update as I was arguing with a cheesecake yesterday and losing. My weekend consisted of going to see Transformers rather than running and then having to run on my day off to make up for it. Not sure that it was a good exchange with hindsight but it was always a risk. I did another four yesterday (post sleeping off the cheesecake trauma). This bought my total distance run to 26 miles. That is a marathon. I am impressed. Do you think that the Singapore Marathon Authority would mind timing my run over several days and take out all the bits when I am not running? I would probably have a reasonable time. It isn't going to rival Paula Radcliffe but I can promise them not to poo on the side of the road. A reasonable time to me is anything under 5 hours incidentally.

Speaking of timings, I want to run this marathon in about 4 hours 30 minutes. This may be a little unrealistic but I have to aim for something. Normally I aim for cheesecake but I am right off it at the moment. Nasty E-coli carrying cream delight. I am suffering with Minstrels in my cheesecake empty world. Not the singing, playing instruments type but the small round chocolate dream. I may have answered the question "why is Sazza such a pudding at the moment"?

(Mmmmm, cheesecake - Cherry)

The weekend according to Cherry

It’s been a good weekend from a running point of view. I’m a mile up on my plan. However I do have to take a rest day today because my sports bra has given me a friction burn. When I tried to put perfume on to go to the pub last night, some of it went on the burn and cause the worst pain ever. A lot like this I imagine, but not involving the arse. As if running isn’t punishment enough without pouring perfume into burns!
In other news I’ve discovered that running in shorts isn’t an option until my thighs are small enough to not rub together. I nearly burst into flames on Saturday.
I’m thinking I deserve a holiday after all this is done. Especially as I will want to display my newly pert bum in a bikini before I get pregnant with another pie-baby.

Another day, another run

Sarah says:

Today I am feeling smug. This should last until lunch time when my legs drop off but at the moment all is good. Why? I hear you cry. Because since leaving work yesterday and arriving this morning I have managed to fit in 2 runs and some wine. OK so I have only covered 5 miles but that is a nice number. It is distinctly better than the 0 miles I had been running until very recently. It also means that I can enjoy my Friday night without the guilt of a missed run. More wine waiter!

A question that I have been asked by everyone I have mentioned this marathon to, all 3 of them, is "are you and Cherry running together?" The answer is no. We aren't. Why not? Well it is reverse competitiveness. Both of us claim to be the slowest runner so running together we might actually end up going backwards in our attempts to be the slowest. Plus, I am a very anti social runner. I don't have enough puff to talk and I need to listen to music to drown out my body's screams and pleading.


I am feeling tempted to buy some bathroom scales but I am scared about what they will say to me at the moment. I am sure a lot of it would be the scale going Oooofffffff bloody hell. The up side would be when I am a svelte tiny person at the end of this all. Hummm, I think the fear is winning.

Cherry says:

Today I feel OK. Last night I did my run and went straight to bed. I did not watch the X Files. The X Files in on too late for me these days. I think my life will mostly involve muscle soak and early nights for a bit.

3 miles last night which I managed at a gentle trot. I would have made excellent time, but I had to stop and stare intently at a missing cat poster and mentally cross reference it against every cat I had seen in the last two weeks. Coincidentally this took just long enough to get my breath back and for the red spots in front of my eyes to disappear.

So not much improvement on the running front but a strange thing is happening. I don’t fancy drinking much. Normally I consider white wine as one of the major food groups, but it just doesn’t appeal at the moment. Not like Sarah who rehydrated from last nights run with a couple of pints of Grolsh and STILL managed to put in 2 miles before work this morning. How? How is she doing that? It’s all I can do to crawl out of bed in time to go to work, let alone get up early and run the streets. Next week will see me trying rise with the lark and run, so watch this space to see me totally fail in that one.

We can't have hit the wall already - from Saz

This is a poor motivation day. I can't be bothered to work, breathe, let alone run but run I must. There is 2.5 miles of road out there that wants me to pound lightly on its face. That combined with the three clothing changes before work as the first two made me look genuinely pregnant have to motivate me. Oh and I have already eaten about 4000 calories in preparation. Well, I need the energy.

Yesterday was a jolly 3 miler. Not too far but far enough for my legs to rebel when going up or down stairs. Whilst running and about a mile in, I did think "this is getting easier I could run forever" but it only lasted to the next up hill section. Round the corner, the world starting going black round the edges and a geezer in robes with scythe decoration kept crossing my path. I wonder at what point it all stops hurting quite so badly. This isn't my first marathon but my overriding memory of the last one was the crippling stomach aches and need for a loo when running more than anything else. I don't remember this pain. Perhaps it is my age. The last marathon was in my mid twenties rather than thundering towards THE milestone.

Total Milometer: 13 miles

In the beginning

Welcome to our space!

I’m training for my first marathon. Not just any marathon. The Singapore Marathon. Why do a marathon in London when you can travel to a hot humid country where it is illegal to chew gum?

Like all good ideas, it all started as a conversation held in a pub, which I think started along the lines of “I bet you can’t”. Obviously I bet I could and a glorious plan was born.

The logic for choosing Singapore is 3 fold:
1) My friend who I’m running with has a brother who lives in Singapore so accommodation will be cheap or free (but may involve sofas and bits of floor).
2) Neither of us has been to Singapore before and
3) we also figure we can take a look at Malaysia while we are there.

We wanted to do a marathon because we’ve both turned into puddings in the last 2 years. Sarah, my friend has a beer baby called Bernard, and I have am well into my 3rd trimester of Fried Chicken Bump. So hence the need to slim down, firm up and generally stop sitting about in pubs talking rubbish. So we have been forcing our prodigious guts into lycra and pounding the pavements of South East London.

So hopefully I’m going to chart my progress on the glorious internet, at least until I can’t be bothered any more or am blacking out too much to turn on my computer.

I’m in the second week of training, and the runs are embarrassingly short. But I’m still feeling a sense of achievement that I haven’t given up yet. At the moment I’m suffering from having little energy to do anything other than limp round my 3 mile route and go home to bed. Sarah and I have named this the Pudding Shock Stage (PSS) as it’s obviously caused by our pudding bodies going into shock at being forced to work. Sarah has run a marathon before and I’m reliably informed that after PSS, comes PS (Poo Stage) which is significantly messier. This occurs when you are able to run far enough to send your body into a full on “every body out!” style panic which causes explosive diarrhoea. I’m told this involves a lot of trying to run with bottom cheeks clenched and lamenting the decline of public lavatories. I do love the idea of my body staging a dirty protest after being forced to run!

So far being utterly exhausted has kept me out of the pub, so I’m seeing some lifestyle change. However I have also started eating like a pregnant woman so I’m not convinced that the muffin top situation is going to improve in any great hurry.