Never mind the Swine Flu!

Well, there’s been  no sign of the pig flu for a good 48 hours, and even then it just manifested itself as a temperature about 1 degree over normal and me feeling a bit grotty.  I don’t even have a cough or a runny nose any more.  I’m right at the tail end of my quarantine period of 5 days and not going to come into close contact with anyone or anything whilst out running, so I decided to head out this evening!

I got to try out my new GPS watch with heartrate monitor.  Wow, what a difference!  As I suspected, it opens up a whole new interesting world of statistics.  You’ll be pleased to hear that including my warm up and warm down sessions, I am jogging or running for over 80% of the session already.  Things can only get better!  Looks like I did the 5K middle bit (without the warm up or warm down) in around 33 minutes 50 seconds.

I am also proud to announce that I ran for a third of a mile without stopping with my first stint.  That is a new record by far.  After that first stint I only walked for a very short distance before doing 0.2 mile and so on and so forth.  It’s a huge improvement on the maximum 0.2 miles without stopping I managed on my first time out, and I ran/walked it 50/50 then.  Now it’s more like 80/20.  This is only my fifth time out!

The heartrate monitor is fascinating as well.  I realised that my maximum heartrate is waaaay above what the formulas suggest.. at first I was thinking “170bpm and I’m supposed to be feeling exhausted and unable to talk?  That’s my fast walking heartrate and I could sing at that!” but having adjusted it to what I am estimating my real maximum heartrate is (one website had a particularly good way) suddenly all the zones make a lot more sense.  Much happier!

I aim to go out again this weekend, probably on Sunday to give myself a rest tomorrow.

In other news, both children are completely over the swine flu too – the only issue is the conjunctivitis caused by C’s reaction to the Tamiflu which we have stopped giving her now.  Steve shows no sign of getting it at all.

Thank you!

It’s great to see so much interest already in my challenge – I’ve had hundreds of visitors already!  Thank you very much to everyone who is reading and continues to read.. and especially an extra big thank you to those of you who have linked to this blog.  Particularly Suzi over at Nee-Naw as I have already had many hits via you – thank you!!

One thing I think I forgot to mention in all the tens of thousands of words I’ve already written is this.  The Miscarriage Association is a small charity, with a very small budget and one they are struggling to meet right now.   A quarter of their income comes from fundraising like this – and mostly the London Marathon at that.. and their London Marathon team is nowhere near as big as many charities have.   So unlike with the big household name charities, any money I can raise will make much more of an impact.  If I manage to raise (say) double my target, that is a HUGE amount extra for this charity.  They do so many great things with very little money.  Which of course gives me even more motive to do the very best I can.  I’m considering contacting magazines/newspapers etc with my story later in the year to see if I can get some extra publicity.

In other news, it looks very much like I won’t be able to train this week.  The piggy flu has descended with painful inevitability as we live in SE London, one of the major hotspots.  My eldest child B is over it after getting it on Monday, but is of course quarantined until Sunday.  Now my youngest C has a fever and a very runny nose, and Steve is out right now getting her Tamiflu prescription.. she’ s only 8 months so we had to ring several pharmacies before we could find one that had the liquid form at the right level rather than the standard pills.  And I have a mild fever too, so clearly I am fighting it.  Thankfully none of us are badly affected as you would not believe C was even ill from her behaviour!