Chartsengrafs

Hello there,

Time seems to be flying by this week and I don't seem to have done a great deal.

So today I've decided to think and blog about my goal to "Become a runner".

I use an excellent website called Fetcheveryone, where you can enter every run you do and say how well it went, how tired you were, what shoes you were wearing etc. This is perfect for me as I have a love of graphs and tables. I used to get my graph fix from monitoring my peak flow and Fev-1 score (to determine how my lungs were doing), but then my gadget broke and it didn't seem as fun on an old-fashioned meter. As soon as I started running I was on Microsoft Excel, writing things like, "Distance - 0.91miles, Time - 14 minutes 33" :-)

So, today I had a look at this beautiful graph (above) that very cleverly and usefully charts how much running you have done since the beginning of time. It all began in 2007 with gay abandon (the big red lines) before getting ill over christmas. Then another spurt before a miserable year of pneumonia and aspergillus and pseudomonas. 2009 was plagued with problems at work and an operation on my sinuses, and the result of all these setbacks is a very uneven graph. But I'm rather proud to note that the light blue lines are looking good. I have had my most successful January, February and March, in terms of distance run. But take a look at April. And May. And I guess June is also looking pretty sorry for itself. I'm a logical person but there's a niggling fear that there's a catastrophe just around the corner, readying itself to leap into my life and destroy my lofty ambitions. I know it's ridiculous. 2007 I hadn't started running yet, 2008 I was incredibly ill, and 2009 I had blood coming out of my nose. There is no reason why next month will be bad. No reason at all.

So, today I had a little think about where to go from here to make sure I don't bugger things up. Now Sport Relief is over and the pressure is off, I'm going to have another go at the 8 week 5k plan. I tried it in 2008 but it was just too depressing to have to keep going back to week 1 every time I got ill. As of next month, I will have been infection-free for a whole year, and this seems a perfect time to try again.

The Schedule

• Week 1 Run one min, walk 90 seconds. Repeat eight times. Do three times a week.
• Week 2 Run two mins, walk one min. Repeat seven times. Do three times a week.
• Week 3 Run three mins walk one mins. Repeat six times. Do three times a week.
• Week 4 Run five mins, walk two mins. Repeat four times. Do three times a week.
• Week 5 Run eight mins, walk two mins. Repeat three times. Do three times a week.
• Week 6 Run 12 mins, walk one min. Repeat three times. Do three times a week.
• Week 7 Run 15 mins, walk one min, Run fifteen mins. Do three times a week
• Week 8 Run 30 mins continuously

I'm ignoring week 1, as I think 3 years of running should have just about prepared me for that one. :-)

Today I attempted Run 2/walk 1. I started with 5 minutes of walking to warm up and then I did R2/W1 until I reached the 32 minute mark, when I ran the rest of the way to the 3 mile marker. That's 9 2-min runs and about 4 mins running at the end, with a "sprint" finish. I know that's more than they recommend, but I'm a very slow runner and there's no way I will ever cover 5k in 30 minutes. It was my fastest ever 3 mile at 36 mins 32 secs. And my body doesn't feel like it's going to crumble, which is a good sign after months of pain in my joints.

So a good start I think and hopefully I can repeat this a few more times before moving on to run3/walk1.

In other TYSIC news, I booked tickets to see Quasi this week. I can count the number of gigs I have been to on one hand, as I am a massive ball of anxiety about them. It's mostly the travelling to and from that worries me, but also the density of people that will no doubt have contact with me. Luckily for me, I have the best boyfriend in the world, and on the rare occasions that I simply have to go to a gig, he comes along regardless of how much he hates the band/singer. I've been a massive Quasi fan since I was about 15 and I simply had to go.

So that's 2 gigs in May booked. I also signed up for the MP3 challenge, which (if I'm correct in how this will work) will mean meeting two complete strangers and travelling. There is no way in a million years that I would have ever considered this a month ago.

And on the Ulysses front, I have read the first 3 chapters, but need to re-read chapter 3 about 8 times before I'll be able to write about it on the Ulysses blog.

That was a long post.

Cheerio! Amy. xxx