Category: Sunday Weigh-In

Sunday weigh-in, 5.75 miles and running faster than your ‘black dog’

Jess Guth3 Comments

I woke up this morning with a feeling I haven’t had for years. That feeling of teetering on the edge of depression, of my mental health not being where it should be; the wanting to stay in bed and hide, the barely being able to get up. My black dog was pushing at the door (for some reason I picture my symbolic black dog as a fat black labrador). But there was good news that was worth getting up for – our friends’ baby was born over night and all are doing well. So now I was up, I might as well stay up. I remembered it was Sunday and got an the scales. +1.5 pounds. Hmph (though fully deserved and expected). The plan was to move to the next longer run on the programme, skipping some of the 30 minute ones and moving through to the longer runs more quickly. I had a banana and then we did 15 minutes of yoga.

We set off for our run, heading along the canal towards Bingley for a change. Run/walk ratio continues to be 2mins/30 secs. The first two runs were awful. I couldn’t breathe, my legs felt like led, everything felt like an effort and, if I’m honest, I just didn’t want to do it. It’s hard to describe the battle that went on in my head. Not only did I have the usual ‘ you’re not a runner’, ‘what do you think you’re doing’ and ‘really, you want to run do you?’ going on, I also had a more general crisis. I had a really dark cloud hanging over me which made everything so hard. – the black labrador hanging on to the back of my top and pulling me back. But that wasn’t everything, I also had a tiny little voice, a very quiet voice initially that was trying to be determined not to be ill, not to give in, not to allow the black dog into the room. That voice got louder as we kept going. I had a major wobble just before 2.5 miles where I informed Kath that I couldn’t do ‘it’. I have no idea what ‘it’ was but I was sure that I couldn’t do it. She took no notice of me and just told me that I could and kept going. As she is right about most things I just had to believe her and keep going with her.

The running was hard, I was grateful for every walk break but as I kept going the little determined voice got louder and as we passed 5 miles it got a little bit giddy and almost shouted ‘you can do this’. There was no reply. There was no response saying ‘don’t be stupid’, there was silence. A silence I’m not used to when running. Is this the empty mind, clearing head kind of silence that real runners talk about?  I enjoyed the last half a mile. I actually enjoyed it. I felt like giggling (except I didn’t have enough breath for that), I’d just pictured a big black dog as the symbol of depression running along behind us on the canal desperately trying to keep up with us, tongue hanging out, panting, getting slower and slower and eventually, probably around 4 miles giving up. I win. I ran 5.75 miles today. I woke up not well but I came back from running feeling confident that I will go to bed much better.

So 5.75 miles. Pace of 13.15 minutes per mile. An hour 16 minutes and 10 seconds. However slow that might seem to you, as long as I’m outrunning my black dog it’s fast enough for me. Oh and when I got back on the scales after the run I’d actually lost half a pound since last week. I haven’t changed the weight in the log because that felt like cheating but it felt good.

-1.5 pounds, sunday dinners and stupid dog owners

Jess Guth1 Comment

It’s Sunday. I used to like Sundays. Sundays were for lazy mornings reading in bed, for pottering about, for spending time just watching our flock of sheep and for playing with the crazy kitten…. actually that is still exactly what Sundays are for but they now have the added dimension of the Sunday weigh-in. It was uneventful this morning. I was just awake enough to pop the scales on before standing on them and my eyes had adjusted enough to see I’d lost a pound and a half (and a bit but we’re only recording halves). So right direction after an indifferent food week (with a biscuit or two too many at my work writing retreat).

We’ve just come back from a Sunday dinner at Kath’s mum’s. A beef roast with amazing yorkshire puddings and with chocolate pudding for pudding so I can now safely write about the food plans for the rest of the week without making myself hungry. We’ve got some falafels, some koftas and other bits and pieces for a little picnic tonight, just in case we actually ever want to eat again and we’ll do the same for lunch tomorrow. The rest of the week we have pasta bake, beef stirfry, greek salad, baked spuds and salmon and veggies planned for main meals, the usual mix of eggs, mushrooms on toast, porridge, pancakes etc for breakfast and mostly left-overs and salads for lunches. Kath made some lovely cereal bars last week and we still have a few left so that will do for nibbles.

I’d rather not talk about this morning’s 30 minute run. Horrible horrible horrible. Not made better by some idiotic dog owner not keeping his rodent sized mutt under control. It ran alongside Kath for a bit – I was behind her freaking a little bit – then it was called back and stopped dead – right in front of me. It nearly ended up launched into the canal but instead I managed a rather inelegant hop over it. It then started running after me and you know me and dogs, I freaked a bit, well a lot. In fact I should check whether there is a spike in pace, there probably is. Anyway, Kath ran and I plodded for 30 minutes this morning, let’s just leave it at that.

Happy Sunday everyone

Sunday Weigh-In: back in the right direction

Jess GuthLeave a comment

It’s Sunday, that means its weigh-in day in the Guth/Self household. I’d lost just short of a stone pre injury, then I put 2.5 pounds back on and then stayed the same for one week. I’ve not had a brilliant week in the run up to this weigh-in either. There was that piece of carrot cake, there was the chicken tikka wrap at work, a chocolate or two, an icecream at Bempton Cliffs during the week and the popcorn last night while watching Eurovision. I have been running again though. So I rolled out of bed not really quite sure what to expect, toddled into the bathroom, had a wee and got the scales out from under the bathroom cabinet. Then I stood on them. Then I realised I hadn’t turned them on. Eventually I got the reading and I have lost just about 2 pounds (an ounce or so off if my maths serves me right, I’m better thinking in kgs but the numbers look far too high so I’ll stick to stones and pounds for weight!). Happy with that.

We have had a pretty good start to the week food-wise. We had porridge with blueberries for breakfast and a stirfry with wholemeal wraps for lunch. There was a little bit of an incident with the chilli which means we’ve also drunk plenty of water! We weren’t very organised for shopping and haven’t planned out our meals for the week but for main meals we’re thinking quorn chilli, greek salad, pasta and tomoato/veg sauce, tuna on quinoa and a home made chicken curry. For breakfast we’re not that adventurous and tend to stick to the same stuff every week so there will be scrambled eggs, mushrooms on toast, toast with peanut butter, cereal, porridge, pancakes. We’ve been trying to make our own snacks and puddings etc so we still get a treat but have a bit more control over what is in them! We have great recipes for courgette and dark chocolate buns and for home made cereal bars and whenever we have left over bananas I dig out mum’s banana loaf recipe. For the coming week though we have a load of rhubarb which we really need to do something with. Ideas other than rhubarb and apple crumble (did that last week) are much appreciated but I think Kath also found a rhubarb cake recipe.

So as you can see we are not going all out diet to shift the weight. We’ve tried that and we last about a day before giving up grumpy. We’re just trying to make slightly better decisions and take a bit more control. We’re also drinking less. Not that we ever really had much alcohol but we did often nip to the local and have a couple of pints or share a bottle of wine at the weekend and then have a beer or a glass of wine every other evening or something. Now we’re mostly not drinking, not religiously or obsessively, just thinking about it before opening a bottle. Having said that we’ve just bought a load of wine on a supermarket offer on the basis that the offer was too good to miss and we don’t have to drink it just because it’s there. It will last us a long time – so our reasoning – we shall see. Of course we will have to think about nutrition etc as the runs get longer and if we’re serious about this training lark we will have to cut out the booze completely and that is the plan – but, as they say, one step at a time.