Flood Alert!

I am meant to be running in the Brampton to Carlisle 10 Mile Road Race tomorrow but I am not sure whether:

a) it will be on - heavy rain is causing flooding and the race might be cancelled!
b) if I will actually get out of Kendal - the whole town is on flood alert and already 100's of houses have been evacuated!
c) the roads will be passable to get to Carlisle!

If I do get there and it is actually on it looks like it's going be a wet one!

I have had my Spaghetti Bolognese and I have stayed off the wine this evening - I'm ready, it's up to the weather now!

Children in Need - a good end to a bad week!

I haven't run or done any exercise since my WOTR run on Monday, instead I have gorged myself stupid on junk food and alcohol ... WHY? ... the stress of a little visit from OFSTED!

The big worry is I have a race on Sunday!  The 10 mile Brampton to Carlisle Road Race!

I am usually guilty of not tapering for races!  

This time I have most definitely tapered although I don't think I have done it in quite the right way!

It would be helpful if I could turn into a Super Hero like I did today and FLY instead of run!

Its a little damp out there!

Its wet, its windy, its cold, the river is high and near bursting its banks, some roads and paths are flooded ... but being a running club leader means one things ... the show must go on!

This is the path we usually run along at running club - taken 3 hours before we went running, so funnily enough we avoided it tonight!

Only the hardiest turned up, just 7 tonight but to be honest it was more than I expected considering how bad the weather was!

Despite the weather we had a really good run and managed 4 miles.

The ladies are actually beginning to get the bug and are finally enjoying it!

I have converted them!

There is nothing else for it .... it's got to be cake!

After doing the Helvellyn 10K Trail run yesterday, it was thankfully a rest day today!

If is at all possible the weather today was worse than yesterday - cold, wet and very windy so luckily I wasn't running!  

Instead I lazed around for most of the day until I went out to a local cafe for tea and cake!

I also wrote my review about Helvellyn Trail Race which an be viewed here! 

So so so tired!!

After a particularly stressful day at work I came home to a pile of ironing!  By the time I had finished it was 6 O Clock and I was so tired all I wanted to do was sit down and cry!

After a few minutes sitting down feeling myself sinking further into a hole I decided that despite the exhaustion I would feel better if I forced myself to go for a run.

It was raining heavily but I didn't let this deter me!

I got changed into my running gear and headed out the door.

One thing I hadn't taken into consideration was the fact it was the 5th November!  As I was running along there was fireworks going off left, right and centre!  It was also fairly difficult running as there is a lot of fallen Autumn leaves on the paths at the moment and the rain had made them extremely slippery. Not exactly the most relaxing of runs!

However, I managed 3.62 miles at an average 9.42 minute mile pace.

I also felt 100% better afterwards!

Back to the safety of the pool!

Tonight I finally made it back to the Tri Club Pool Training Session, the first I have been to since 22 April 2015, which means over 7 months of avoidance of drills!!

Tonight I got my comeuppance! I had to suffer an hour of drills, and boy did I suffer!

All the Open Water Swimming has obviously played havoc with my technique and I felt like I was back to square one!

However, I survived and after doing every drill imaginable (and a few more!) I had swum 1550 metres, which is just under a mile.

Despite it being hard work I really enjoyed being back in the fold and will make sure its a regular occurrence once again! 

Cold, dark and foggy!

Tonight I went out in the cold, the dark and the fog!

 If I was going for a run I would think this was pretty acceptable, however tonight I went for a swim in Lake Windermere!  

What is normal about that?!

David, my swimming friend keeps convincing me to go for "one more swim" before I retire my wetsuit for the Winter!  

Amazingly it is not the cold that gets to me but the dark!  

Tonight it was so so so dark, with a little fog lingering over the only lights in the distance I wasn't sure I could survive!

For the first 25m or so I felt totally stressed!  I ket my beady eye on David's blue light on the back of his goggles and was determined to keep up with him!  I wasn't going to be left alone tonight!

Before getting in David had given me a little pep talk about there being a lot of leaves and twigs etc in the lake at the moment due to the recent weather so if I swum into something or something touched my face I was not to panic!

That is very easily said ... not so easily done!

It was pitch black and I was just praying it was in fact just leaves and twigs surrounding me!

Amazingly by the time we were heading back to the boathouse (which was lit so we could see the way!) my eyes had adjusted and it didn't seem quite so dark or quite so scary!

My first Open Water Swim this year was the 3rd May, so I am feeling very proud that I can say I have swum Open Water for 6 months now - only 6 months to go before I am REALLY hard core - or insane I'm not sure which!