So... Running.

 

Last Saturday I had the ingenious idea to sign up for a half marathon in order to get fit and raise money and awareness for Alzheimer's Society and MNDA. 

   

If you ignore the fact that I've spent my entire life so far trying to avoid exercise, the initial idea was pretty simple. Start going for regular runs so that by the time June arrives 13.1 miles is a doddle. However, after my first 3 outings this week I think its going to be rather more challenging than I first expected.

Outing 1 - Not a Great Start

The first outing, on Saturday, was an early morning gentle jog. Unfortunately for me, within the first 5 minutes I had developed a blister on the arch of my left foot. Firstly, how is this even possible and why would a blister develop on the one part of your foot that barely connects with the ground, shoe or anything else? This made the whole run extremely painful and resulted in an annoying mixture of run-walk-run for the remainder of the route.

Outing 2 - Nobody tells you about dogs!

Following the less than successful Saturday outing, bright and early Monday morning I decided to give it another go. In my pre-morning coffee state I forgot to stick a plaster over my blister to protect it from the inevitable and so once again my run fell into the run-walk-run trap. 

Sadly, this was the least of my worries.

For as long as I can remember I have gone out of my way to avoid coming anywhere close to the proximity of dogs. Big dogs, small dogs, noisy dogs, quiet dogs. They're all horrible! However, the worst dogs in the whole entire world has to be the bouncy 'I just want to say hello' dogs. 



Absolutely no one thinks to mention these four-legged, saliva foaming, 'happy to see you' creatures when they encourage you to go for a run in a park or around a lake. I'm barely 5ft tall and your excitable dog bounding towards me at speed with or without a tennis ball is pretty scary. 

The issue on Monday was that I couldn't even see the man's dog until it jumped out of the bushes at my feet. At this point it was too late to react sensibly and so my only option was to squeal and close my eyes. When I opened them the owner was standing in front of me giving me the 'did you just squeal at my little Terry?' look. Terrific.


That is when I had the idea of writing about my training experiences and (fingers-crossed) progress in a blog.

To sponsor our run please visit:
Joanne Liz and Dan's Half Marathon Challenge

You can also follow us on Twitter: @JoanneLizandDan