Festive rejuvenation!

It's 2015 and just a couple of hand fulls of weeks until my first ever marathon. Oh and then my second!

Yes it's become all too real. But guess what? I'm okay! In fact I'm more than okay. Father Christmas presented a parkrun shaped stocking to me on Christmas Day which led to a total of 55k run from then until New Years Eve. And what fun we all had. 

It reminded me of all the reasons I started to love running. YES it's true I love running. I know, I know. You all knew it. I knew it but now I'm not afraid to say it. Getting up on a cold and frosty Boxing Day to have people sign in to my unofficial SRC Maidstonen run has to be a highlight of 2014. Especially when myself and Felicity dropped back but rounded a corner at 3k to find everyone had stopped to wait for us. Which they did all they way around the 10k route. Magical. 

Thanks to some fabulous unexpected pacing by my friend Ben the very next day I beat my Maidstone parkrun PB by a whole second!









Add to this a sunny end of the year 10 mile race around Staplehurst on a crisp, clear winters day - mostly spent chatting to my long standing run buddy Colin who reminded us all of his epic Beachy Head spirit by powering up the hills. Supported by fairly new runner Gerry who left us for dust over the last mile. A bit of bling to bring in the New Year. 

What a new year - double parkrun day. Shin splints in the first and a fear for the second. But complete non-runner friend Serena had come for both so come on - I was a marine - (well I wasn't but I so could have been) toughen up. A drink and energy bar later and a strange drop in temperature from drinking just 10 miles up the road and I was only 2 seconds off my PB for the route of our second parkrun. 

Can you believe it gets better - on a visit to family I nip to Shrewsbury parkrun (closing in on 50 runs so don't want to miss one) and I catch up with Margaret (@nicecuppatea) and then completely randomly run into Run Mummy Runner Amy who I met at Royal Parks Half. Which was lucky as Amy doesn't often do parkrun but was supporting another RMR for her first! 

Then home and the guts of my marathon training starts - all chocolate in the house eaten. Following the James Lampert school of clearing the cupboards and we hit those North down trails. I love these runs. They are everything running should be. Everything running has become. Plus we even have a shared spreadsheet across our group now so we can keep up with our plans, our races and benchmark activity BBM and ABM (Before Brighton Marathon and After Brighton Marathon). Could life be any better and so different to those dark November days? Ask me at mile 20 on 12 April. 

I can't imagine what it will be like. I know it will be hard. But I'm no longer scared. I'm having too much fun. Especially with my new Garmin Forerunner 620 strapped to my wrist telling me my VO2 Max means I can run a marathon in 4hrs 15 minutes. Seriously?! Good thing is I don't want to run it that fast. I just want to run. With my friend Glyn and knowing all my other friends - who were once just crazy strangers who did this thing called running - are out there on the course too. We will be willing each other to finish. And yes. Of course they'll be plenty of selfies going on too!