By Stephie, on Sunday 28th November, 2010 at 19:34 pm
 The course takes in part of the Falmouth coastline. I had 2 inches of frozen snow on my windscreen this morning, but I diligently scraped it off. Engine running and smiling to myself, I thought “well, I’m not going to get up the lane anyway. It looks like sheet ice”. I made it to the top of the lane and out on to the main road. “Dammit, stupid car.” My hopes of getting out of the 5 mile ‘Falmouth Mob Match‘ road race due to the weather were dashed.
In fact the weather was glorious today, full sunshine, no wind, but bitterly cold. Cold enough for there to be plenty of ice on the roads. I doubted many would turn up for the run, preferring to stay tucked up in bed in the warm. Of the twelve women registered from our club only 5 showed; it was a similar story for the men. The rest of the Cornish clubs (this was the last race of the season) didn’t seem to have succumbed to the warmth of their duvets. They were out in force: the field was about 420.
The race started promptly at 11am and just to get us in the mood, our first stretch was up a lovely steep hill which turned a bend up another one. Thankfully we had a bit of respite as we headed down the next extremely steep one before running round Swanpool Lake (I’d describe it as more of a big pond!). I couldn’t help sniggering to myself when I heard other runners hoping, in desperation, that the course wouldn’t be taking them back up the hill we’d just run down. Of course it did. It was a killer and, I thought, rather aptly named ‘Cemetery Hill’ after the cemetery that runs alongside it. I felt slightly sick having run all the way to the top of it, but rather pleased with myself that I’d overtaken a few runners on the way. (Those hill repeats last Wednesday may have paid off!) We continued along the sea front and the field began to thin out a bit, most of it being ahead of me. By the time we got to the end of the ‘promenade’ the faster runners were already on their way back. It was rather freaky seeing a woman wearing nothing but a cropped top and shorts flash by at the speed of light (the temperature was zero!). In fact she’s the sort of runner I picture in my mind when I want to gee myself up a bit – I imagine I look just like her: strong, fast, making it look so easy. Imagination is a great thing, the reality is I look the complete opposite. Still, I was glad to see a few familiar faces from our club in the front group.
We carried on round up another steep hill past the docks and there was a lot of heavy breathing going around me on at this point. And still no walking for me. Just ahead of me I could see another team mate and I kept her in my sights until the last mile or so, when she dashed off too. It was rather comforting to have her there and when she was gone I felt I had to up my pace a bit – I knew I was last in for our club, but I really didn’t want it to be in an ‘embarrassing’ time! (In all honesty though, if you can run 5 miles at all, there’s nothing embarrassing about it). We ran back along the promenade to cross the finish line and I virtually fell across it in 51 minutes and a couple of seconds. Just outside my ‘hoped for’ time, and with at least 50 others behind me. So I’m well chuffed with that – almost 10 minute miles as opposed to the over 12 minute miles in the half marathons. And I thought running faster would be impossible. Just goes to show what a bit of training (ok, so very little for this race) and a lot of encouragement can do.
Now I need a shower and something hearty to eat, so I’ll say aurevoir for now, hope you had a good weekend too and will speak to you again soon 
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Friday 1st October, 2010 at 00:16 am
 Gorgeous Garmin The Garmin FR60 is gorgeous – and this one’s all mine, mwa, ha, ha, ha, haaa! In case you were wondering, it’s a sports watch with a heart rate monitor. I’ve had some birthday money floating around for a while now and rather than just let it get subsumed in the family budget I thought I should spend it on myself. That feels a bit unnatural, but I think that’s why I was given it! And I found the watch for a snip on Amazon, so why not
I think it might be just the right time for a bit of help with the motivation and this little gadget has got me all excited. I’m not known for my gadget fondness, most of the time I just can’t be bothered; things that are meant to save you time usually end up costing more than you bargained for. I don’t even own a microwave, I mean what would I do with it – heat up my cold coffee? And as for mobile phones, yes I’d love an iphone, but I’ve got less money than sense and a four year old Sony that works just fine thanks very much. So it feels almost unnatural getting excited over something that just measures my heart rate when I go for a run…
But it’s what you can do with the information that counts. You can set your minimum and maximum heart rate and divide them into 5 (or more) ‘zones’ (I used the Karvenon formula to do this). It’s pretty straight forward to work out (even I could do it!) and once you’ve got your minimum and maximum (mhr) you can just enter those into a table on Garmin Connect and it divides them up into zones for you – saving you all the number headaches. I like! The zones will be shown as 50 – 60% of your mhr (zone 1), 60 – 70% of your mhr (zone 2), etc. This means that if you’re following a training programme like me, one that tells you to run at an easy pace for 8 miles say, you’ll know you need to be running in zone 2, or if you’re told to run at a ‘challenging’ pace (aka ‘go kill yourself Stephie’), you should be running in zone 5 (but not if you want to live, obviously). You’d think that you can do all this without a sports watch, after all if you can hardly breath you know you’re working hard, right? Yep true, but since I’ve been using the watch I’ve realised that that method just isn’t so accurate, and I’ve found that I should’ve been working harder than I was, ha, ha! It seems to me that I’d been slowing down a bit because I was tired, but since I’ve used the heart rate monitor I know that my heart can easily cope and that it’s actually my legs that are getting tired. Weight training it is then. Damn watch!
The other thing I love about this watch is that you can set it to beep when you’re running below or above the zone/s you’ve decided to run in and you can set an alarm for the period of time you want to run for too. You can also set up interval sessions – you know, run hard for 5 minutes and then easy for 2 kind of thing. Then of course you can upload all your lovely data to Garmin connect, and I’m glad to say, to Map My Run too, woohooo! And all that just with the heart rate monitor. Now I’m saving up for the foot pod to go with it, then I’ll know how far I’ve run, how many calories I’ve burnt, and oooh, so much more.
Bored yet? Thought you might be, so here’s some piccies I took the first time I used it. I went for a walk along the coast from Chapel Porth to Porthtowan, which is a tad hilly let me tell you!
 Moody skies towards Porthtowan  The lovely Porthtowan itself  Blue Bar Well you know me, a walk wouldn’t be a walk if there wasn’t a cup of coffee involved somewhere along the way! Ta, ta for now. Back soon.
Love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Tuesday 27th July, 2010 at 02:21 am
 Badge of honour! I took part in my first race since school on Saturday evening: The 7 mile Tywardreath Trotter. Racing at school was akin to torture; the running was fine, it was just the racing bit I couldn’t stand. I loved cross country though, getting covered in mud and falling over in streams and ditches – and taking in the odd detour when the teacher wasn’t looking. No detours allowed at Tywardreath though! And no need either.
The Trotter was heaven: lots of off road sections along footpaths beside a river, bridleways through trees and a few fields to cross too. And I won’t forget the incredibly long, steep hills, especially the mountainous uphill one right at the end! I imagine that on a clear day there might even have been some great views. As it was, it was raining typical Cornish mizzle and we were soaked before we started. There weren’t a great many people taking part (weather probably), less than a hundred I should think (ok, so that was way under the mark – there were 168 runners!). The die-hards were there in force though, clubs from across the county and runners from much further afield too (Devon, Somerset, even Berkshire, which is a good couple of hundred miles away). Before the race my training partner Jacqueline and me were standing in a musty old hall to keep dry, along with lots of club runners. Of course we were ear-wigging on some of their conversations about who beat who last time and the times they expected to achieve in this race. If that was a tactic meant to make us feel inadequate, it worked!!! Needless to say, all very macho and competitive – unsurprisingly since they were mostly men 
 EEEEEEK! Wearing a number for the first time - and looking very shifty and un-photogenic as usual!
 Standing at the back at the start-line The worst part of the race for me was the start. We stood towards the back of the pack (there was no way I was getting in the way), but there were still a good few people behind us. When the race started it felt really claustrophobic, like you were being pulled along with a tide and there was no way out. I dread to think what it’ll feel like at the half marathon in October when there’ll be 20 times more runners at the start line…
I wouldn’t say we got off to a flying start. No, definitely not. Jacqueline had a painful Achilles tendon in the first 1/2 mile and up the first steep hill I was nominated as her masseuse! We were right at the back from the off really. I kept Jacqueline company for the first two and a half miles or so as she struggled on, but had to give in and leave her (as she instructed!) as I was getting cold. It feels hard leaving a friend behind, but I was also beginning to feel a bit competitive. Not what I’d expected at all! I saw people in front of me as markers – a bit like I might use a telegraph pole on a training run: I’ll just get to that one, then the next one, then the next one… By the time I got to the finish line I couldn’t see anyone in front of me. They’d all finished and gone for a beer. When I’d got my breath back I started searching for Jacqueline thinking she’d been trollied off and sent to a first aid tent somewhere. But no, she’d soldiered on and even put on a sprint finish for my benefit (she’s an amazing sprinter), but I missed it as I was back in the musty old hall trying to find out where she was! I was feeling very guilty, but as an older runner said after the race “you’ll never run alone, there’ll always be someone that runs at a similar pace to you”. So if I go haring off next time I’ll try and remember that!
 Smiling through the pain! Jacqueline at the end of the race. Results just in!
Stephie: 155th out of 168 – in 1:23 (woohooo – not in the bottom 10! Next year maybe not in the bottom 15?!)
Jacqueline: 162nd out of 168 – in 1:29:31
Fastest runner – 0:38:53/ Slowest runner – 1:41:19 Full results will soon be on the Trotter website
See you soon! love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Friday 16th July, 2010 at 23:16 pm
12 weeks and counting: The Eden half marathon is getting worryingly close! Probably a good time to put a proper training plan in place then… I’ve been ‘doing a bit of running’ over the last few months (8 miles being the furthest I’ve run), but I feel the need to stick to something more structured now; I want to be able to tick things off along the way and know I’m actually getting somewhere. There’s been a bit of bickering amongst the small group of us who’ve been training together, rumblings about the best way to go about it – someone wants to do the same mid-length run on the same circuit to develop stamina, someone else wants to run slower (to ‘fat-burn’) with more variation, and me, well I don’t know really. I guess I want to gain some stamina, speed and strength (nothing much ). Since the others have decided to follow their own ideas (no, no compromise!!) I thought I might as well sort out exactly what it is I want to do, bearing in mind what I’m actually aiming to achieve by doing this in the first place (errr – I think I may have forgotten that one, can you remind me please?!). I thought the best place to start would be at the local bookshop and found this one by Sam Murphy – in the nick of time really since there’s a 10 week half-marathon training programme that looks pretty good for me to follow. It’s got lots of variety, one long run a week, plenty of hill and interval training; what else could a girl want? Actually, don’t get me started on that one…
 Eden's on the calendar... In her wisdom, one of my training partners decided it would be good for me to run a short race before Eden and has very rashly signed us up for the Tywardreath (pronounced tie-war-dreth) Trotter 7 mile race. I sort of agreed, it might be a good idea to see what it’s like to run with hundreds of other people around me and to experience the atmosphere. But then, I didn’t realise it was so soon: it’s next Saturday. That’s right, 1 week away. I’m not panicking or anything. No. I haven’t run a race since school (which was literally decades ago) and I was rubbish at it then, but it’s only 7 miles so there’s nothing to worry about really is there? Er, well I wasn’t worrying until I took a look at the times last year’s competitors did it in. OMG! That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Oh, and can someone make sure there’s an ambulance round about the third mile mark please.
If you don’t hear from me for a few days, you’ll know why. I’ll either be hiding from Jacqueline or in a heap in a corner somewhere exhausted from all the training. By the way, does anyone know whether chocolate is a good source of carbs…
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Sunday 20th June, 2010 at 22:43 pm
Father’s day. Yep, like father like son, as they say. Zzzzzzzzzz… I’m that boring :0
 Is it me, or is she sending you to sleep too? Ok, I can take a hint. I’ll just sit here and take in the view for a while.
 which is stunning, but I can’t help it if that view also happens to include a hot looking bloke and his steed, can I? Pity I didn’t dress up for the occasion
 Riding on the beach? Yes please... Checking out the talent? Who me? Nah, I’m just looking at the jelly fish, mate.
 beautiful ones of course.
By Stephie, on Sunday 23rd May, 2010 at 11:42 am
I’ve enjoyed myself this last week, though it’s been at the expense of cleaning the house  I don’t care about that though, I mean would you? Just look at the fantastic colours I came across when I was walking around a local reservoir with my friend Janie.
 Perfect! Can you get more bucolic than this?! Argal Reservoir is one of those lakes dotted with fisherman sitting patiently, and people walking their dogs. It’s probably only about 2 miles round so you often get families walking there at weekends. I prefer it when it’s more quiet, ha, ha!
 Scenes like this take my breath away.  Unfurling ferns glow in the shade  and the green, green moss slowly spreads. I’m thinking about making a small quilt using these colours as inspiration. I absolutely love blue and green together and used to use it all the time in my oil paintings (years ago) – emerald and cerulean blue, nothing beats it!
I’ve been enjoying looking at colour a lot this week and these anemones were no exception. I bought them at the roadside and they’ve been brightening up my kitchen for almost a week now. I also finally got the key cupboard up on the wall – I repainted it in January!
 Simple pleasures.  Simple colour. We’ve had fantastic warm and sunny weather here for the past few days and I think it’s finally got me motivated enough to go out for a run. I did 6 miles on Friday, but I need to do a lot more regular running if I’m going to enter a half marathon in October. That was IF! If I do it, I’ll probably try and raise money for the mental health charity Mind. In the mean time I need to sort out a training schedule. If I find more hedgerows like this on my routes that shouldn’t be too much of a problem
 A riot of spring colour! I hope you’re not too disappointed that I haven’t brought you any pictures of things I’ve been making this week; that’s because they’re not finished yet, but hopefully they will be by the end of the day, so come back soon to see! If you want to see a lovely bit of hand quilting right this minute though take a trip over to Jo Avery’s blog to see her spiderweb quilt that she finished this week, it’s l o v e r l y!!
Time for another run now, and then some pottering and more making. So I’ll see you soon my lovelies.
Love Stephie x
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I'm running a 28 mile marathon in memory of Josie this February. Come and find out why.
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