A wedding, some walking & a work-out

No blog for 5 days.  No run for 4 days. So what have I been doing?! Well, although I didn't manage to blog about it, on Thursday I did get up early for a 5.5 mile run before work, which was lovely - I need to start running more often in the morning and take advantage of the early sunshine!

Unfortunately though, I haven't run since, but I do have my Juneathon excuses lined up:

On Friday, we were on holiday! We drove 3 hours up to Derbyshire, to go to a friend's wedding.  Although there was no exercise, the wedding was absolutely wonderful - I shed more than a couple of tears during the ceremony and we slipped away from the reception for a couple of hours to watch the England v Sweden match in the Best Man's hotel room! A great day :)

Saturday - No running again, but we went for a 8 mile hike around the village of Grindleford, where we were staying.  Definitely counts for Juneathon, as going up and down the hills in the Peak District was hard work at times, but I absolutely loved the walk despite the frequent and heavy rain storms! The walk took us through different types of landscape, from fairytale ancient forest, to dales dotted with flocks of sheep, to standing high on the heather moorland looking over the view down the valley, to the Grindleford Summer Festival from which, for 20 minutes before we arrived, we could hear the sound of bagpipers, and along muddy paths by the river.  The countryside in this part of the world is absolutely beautiful and we'll definitely go back...there are even loads of runners to make me feel at home - I saw more runners on Saturday than I usually see in Essex or London in a week, and they were all running on trails and more often than not, up some very steep slopes!

Me in the pouring rain

Sunday - we carried on with our Derbyshire site-seeing tour and drove back home, getting back at about 9pm and although I'd planned to, I didn't go out for an evening run - we'd walked quite a lot during the day but I know that's a poor excuse! We also ate ice-cream, chips from the chippy, chocolate, pastries, scones....a terrible day's eating, although it was all very tasty ;)  Sunday though seems to be the day for bikers as opposed to runners in Derbyshire - we saw more cyclists attacking the hills than we saw when we were in Tuscany a couple of years ago (when we drove along what is apparently the world's best cycling road) - and I've never seen so many bikers as we did at Matlock Bath where they all park up along the street and have a pint! 

Monday - back to work, but still in holiday mode - total Juneathon fail as I sat on the sofa after dinner and decided I couldn't be bothered to run, again!

Tuesday - hurray....and I'm back....healthy eating today, exercise and blogging.

This morning I went for a free trial session with a personal trainer at my gym.  I was very nervous about it and worried about feeling self-conscious, but the trainer was excellent, and and I really enjoyed myself.  We did intervals on the rower, mat exercises with swiss balls and medicine balls, and then some work with the weight machines and I was astonished at how much I felt it in my muscles...and how weak I was in some areas! The difference having the trainer there was incredible and he also explained which muscles the different exercises were working, and how they would all help with my running which was really interesting. I did things I've never tried before, and now have aches in places I haven't felt before ;) I've already signed up for another session next week!

I was originally going to run long tonight (a 20odd miler) but as I'm already aching from this morning, I'm not sure I'll make it that far, so think I'll do the long one at the weekend instead, and try and do about 8 miles tonight, back from the train station home with a rucksack :)

My 30 mile run is now just 2 and half weeks away and my 50 miler is in just 4 and a half weeks!!