Put down the jaffa cakes!

I’ve now reached day 11 of injury...of not running, not exercising & eating everything in sight…including all the crisps, chocolate, flapjacks and jaffa cakes I can get my hands on. It’s like I’m still eating to fuel myself through an ultra a day, never mind a marathon, and I know it's comfort eating of the worst kind.

I feel like I’m slowly going insane and although I’m not weighing myself these days so don’t know how much I weighed when I started, I must have put on half a stone. My jeans certainly feel like I have!

Now, although I can’t run, or cycle, or really walk, that’s not to say I have to let my health & fitness go completely out the window and today I’m determined to stop feeling so sorry for myself and get a grip. Just because I can’t exercise at the moment, I can still focus on my nutrition.  If I can get back to some sort of normality with my eating, and stop putting on loads of weight, and actually lose some, when I do start running again, I’m not going to be trying to shift quite so many lbs around! It'll be like taking off a full rucksack ;)

The other thing that has prompted me to try and sort myself out and get ready for when my injury heals is that yesterday the date of the next Thames Path 100 miler was announced (3^rd May 2014) as was the date that you can enter (29^th June 2013).

Although I’ve talked a lot about trying a 100 miler next year, recently I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s too soon and maybe I should wait a few years until I try what, for me, is the ultimate distance to run all in one go. (The 145 miles of the GUCR is just a bit too incredible and not on my bucket list). However, as soon as the notification came out from Centurion about the dates for the TP100, I got very excited. I realised that this is definitely something I want to do, and know it's got to be my next challenge – at 10am on June 29^th, I’m going to be sat in front of the computer trying to get my application in before everyone else!

I want to give myself as much of a chance as I can though, and carrying so much extra weight when I run really can’t be good for me – who knows, if I was a stone or so lighter, maybe running the 10in10 would have left me injury-free?! So, nutrition it is. Healthy, balanced and normal is what I’m aiming for and hopefully once I can start doing some cardio again (swimming and cycling probably, before I can run) the weight-loss will sort itself out. I’ve got the 100km race in September, which my physio (at the moment) still thinks is feasible, and that will give me a really good yardstick for the training I’m going to need to do to get ready for May 2014!