Day 7: Ben Lomond

It's now one week into my training and I've actually noticed a real difference in each of my first 3 runs. Not just physically, but also mentally. It's becoming easier to just keep going even when I feel like walking another 500m or walking until the next 5 minute mark instead of running it all.

I've ended this weeks training with something a bit different. This time four of us took to Ben Lomond for a bit of hillwalking. This was the first time I had done any hillwalking so, in keeping with my usual lack of preparedness, I was planning on doing it in jeans and running shoes. Apparently that's a terrible idea and, after doing it, I'm inclined to agree.

We set out from Rowardennan at about half 10 and, after thinking we had gotten lost almost immediately, made our way through the forest area that makes up the first area of the walk. Now, I should acknowledge that is October but, it having been a fairly rain free month, I thought the ground would be dry. It wasn't. 20 minutes in to our ascent we had taken a wrong a turn and I had nearly sacrificed both shoes to a boggy area of the woods, the bog and I would meet again on the way down. A wrong turn once we made it out of the first woody area set us back a few minutes more but once this was over we were well on our way.

Out of the woods and onto the relatively clear paths, Mhairi and I encouraged the other two to go on ahead, we'll only slow you down, just go, don't look back, or something to that effect. For the first hour or so things were great, it really is a beautiful looking down on Loch Lomond from there and the views get more spectacular the higher you go. Then things turned sour. Mhairi, being somehow even less fit than me, started to tire and we slowed down a bit more. Soon my motivational skills kicked in. "I'll buy you one of those new Chinese munchie boxes if you make it to the top" I said in the hope that would spur her on. She says it didn't help but she definitely sped up.

Then the motivational speeches started. "Come on, think how amazing you'll feel when you make it to the top, you'll be able to say you've accomplished it!". But soon the bribery and motivational speeches gave way to meanness. "When we get back, you're going to the gym!" and "I can't believe how unfit you are!". I'm not proud of either of those.

As we sauntered on we were passed by a variety of people, grey haired couples breezed past us with a cheery "morning!" to which they received only a grunted reply, small children scaled the higher rocks like tiny Spider-men, men in colourful tights sped past us making me wonder if they were off to fight Papa Shango in a winner-takes-the-mountain wrestling match at the top. Most demoralising though were the people who we had seen set off at the same time as us, now coming back down the hill, each with the now infuriating "Not long to go now!", coupled with a disgustingly large Cheshire cat style grin.

Eventually though, we made it to the top. There's something quite ethereal about sitting in a cloud, looking back at where you've just walked. After a bit of lunch and a few pictures, we started to make our way back down and immediately turned into the people that had annoyed us so much on the way up. "MORNING!" I practically screamed in the face of everyone we saw, it was about half past 2 in the afternoon by this point but that's beside the point. If I saw someone struggling up the hill, I wanted to give them that Cheshire cat grin with a "NOT LONG TO GO NOW HAHAHAHAHA!", I restrained myself from doing so, still very aware of just how annoying it is.

The smiles let you know this was on the way down

The walk down was more of a freefall with it being so difficult to control your speed, but we made good time and were on our way home by around 4pm, although I was now shoeless having once again tangled with the bog and having sank up to my ankles. True to my word, we dined on Chinese munchie boxes that night, infinitely proud of our first Munro.

I'm running for Childreach International, you can donate to them here.

Day 4: Garage Burger

I'm now onto day 4 of my training and last night was my second run. The preparation for this one was, in most ways, much better than the first run. My stretching of key areas like my hips, vital due to my spending the better part of 8 hours a day sitting at a desk, and my thighs, which caused a lot of trouble last time when they had started to tighten up quite early on in my first run, was more thorough and it definitely felt a lot better. My preparation did leave a lot to be desired in terms of my choice of running gear however. It seems that shorts are already out. The cold meant that by the time I had hit the 2 km mark I started to notice my calves were beginning to tighten up to a point where it was pretty uncomfortable to keep a slower and more steady pace. Despite this I made fairly OK time over the 5km by completing it in 34 minutes, which is roughly the same time I finished 4.7km on Sunday.

This week is all about the 5km. The training plans I have, recommend being able to run 5km before starting them, something I haven't really attempted before. So far, that's looking pretty good barring any disasters. I've plotted myself a pretty decent 5km route that covers a few different types of areas, there are a few inclines in there that are pretty tough going and the route can be at times, for Whitburn anyway, pretty scenic, especially when it takes me through Polkemmet Country Park. The only problem is that it's pretty much exactly a 5km round trip. This causesd me problems when I decided to end my run at my parents house instead of mines. The last 500m were completed running around the streets surrounding my parents house, constantly checking my run tracker app to see if I was done yet. Definitely an odd experience.

One of the biggest challenges of this whole training period is going to be how I eat. I'm not a particularly big guy around the waist but I could do with shaving off a few pounds even if it is, as has been pointed out, for aerodynamics come marathon day.

It's actually kind of a miracle that I'm not a lot heavier than I am, I am an extremely big eater who does not eat at all right and does very little to counter-balance this unhealthy eating. It's not helped by the fact that in a town of very little else, there is a lot of tremendous food places in Whitburn.

Despite all this my weight has never really fluctuated much, I've gotten bigger as I've gotten older but never to alarming levels. Even internally I'm not doing to badly, my cholesterol is higher than I would like but it isn't classed as high. In a way I'm probably a wonder of science.

Cards on the table though, the word "diet" strikes fear in to my, saturated fat clogged, heart. It means giving up the donner kebab that should accompany the mid-night-out walk between pubs. It means giving up fish suppers (chips aren't always necessary and are often replaced with 6 large fritters). It means no more garage burgers (a culinary invention of my own, it's a microwaveable burger, topped with macaroni cheese, with diced pepperami). It's genuinely one of the worst things I've ever tasted, but it looks magnificent. It means spending 4 hours Googling quinoa, to still not fully understand what it actually is but to come to the conclusion that it's probably healthy so I should probably start eating it, only then to discover that by eating it, you're actually causing the price of it to rise so high that the people who used to eat the stuff can't afford it and are turning to eating, the now cheaper, junk food. Magic.

My creation: the now infamous "Garage Burger"

The hardest part for me though is that it also means giving up pizza. Beautiful, glorious pizza. I can only use one example to describe my love of pizza. I recently bought someone, as a birthday present, a pizza. Like someone might buy a friend an album by some great new band that they just have to hear because, as all great music can, it might just change their life. I bought someone a pizza. I think that fully explains my love of pizza.

I'm running for Childreach International, you can donate to them here.

Day 1: Go!

So, Today was day 1 of my training for the marathon. It did not go well.

When I say I'm unfit, I'm not selling myself short, I'm not being humble and I'm not just unsure of what people can or can't do. I am 100% one of the most unfit people I know. It's probably something to do with spending more time lying along the couch eating pizza than doing any sort of physical exercise. Too often when I have set off for a light run, usually to a shop when the beer has run out or when the takeaway isn't on Just Eat so won't take card payments and I need to go to a cash machine, I get that sting in the lungs that makes you question if it's all going to be worth it. Then the deep breathing starts and eventually, I'm sitting on the kerb, rocking back and forth, wondering when the next bus comes to take me back the 100 yards I've ran so far.

My usual post run/exercise face

That's not what was so bad about my first run though. My preparation was terrible. Everything just felt SO. HEAVY.  The first 5 minutes were OK but after that it was clear any "stretching" I had done before hand was not sufficient, every step felt tight and as if it was taking a gargantuan effort.

For me, warm-ups are an alien thing. Most of my "sporting" endeavours have involved little to no warm-up at all. When I played amateur football I was young and ill-informed of what it takes to look after your body, mainly because I was playing against guys twice my age who it seemed were only there to get away from the wife & kids for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning. My amateur football career lasted from the age of 16-18 and because of this my preparation would usually be thus; the night before I, along with my friends, as we left school on the Friday afternoon, we'd arrange to meet up at one of each others houses, bringing any money gained from our part time jobs and then it was on to a local off-license with a very loose interpretation of Challenge 21. The oldest looking of the group, or the one with the fake EU motorcycle license, would take everyone's money and try his luck to possibly buy a few crates of beer and a few bottles of a certain terrible Scottish vodka, a brand of vodka made closer to Muirkirk than Moscow, before the shopkeeper decided to check ID's, to which the standard response was always "aw, I've just left it in the car with the weans!" or to confiscate the obviously fake ID. 4 or 5 hours later, I'd be hugging the toilet while my sister inadvertently grassed me in to my parents by asking my Mum why I was so unwell.

On to game day and after an hours drive to somewhere like Perth, another hour trying to find the pitch among the housing schemes and 10 minutes trying to find someone who could find a key to open the changing facilities, you had about 30 seconds to "warm-up" before the home team grew restless and hassled the referee to start the game. The 30 seconds would have to be used efficiently. Find the "flashy" player in the opposition, the one that had been on YTS form at Stenhousemuir for 6 months, 8 years ago, and then make sure your team's resident nutcase knew that he was his man. Preparation was more of a mental thing than a physical thing at this level.

When I gave amateur football up and moved on to 5-a-sides, preparation did actually move on to a more physical plane. However, and this is a lot simpler than the preparation for a full 11-a-side game. Everyone lines up in the centre of the pitch, someone kicks a ball towards the goal, whoever is stupid enough to go collect the ball is now the the target. Fairly simple, extremely ineffective.

I think maybe it's time I read up on pre-run preparation.

I'm running for Childreach International you can donate to them here.

Well, I should probably start training soon

Hey!

I will be taking part in the 2016 London Marathon, which I'm sure will be a bit of a surprise to those of you who know me and my penchant for chip shop based challenges rather than running based challenges. I will be running in aid of Childreach International, a fantastic charity who do a lot of great work.

Childreach International work globally to improve access to health care, education and to restore the rights of children. They are also vital in responding to disasters in countries such as Nepal, where an earthquake in April this year devastated whole communities.

If the above sounds vaguely familiar, my girlfriend Mhairi trekked the Great Wall for this charity in 2012, raising £5'200, let's see if we can smash that!

I just wanted to have this blog as a way of tracking my training, hopefully it will be at times funny or encouraging to people who want to do something like this but, like me, don't really know where to start or if they can do it.

I would be very grateful if you could spare anything you have to help a great cause, you can donate here: https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/callummccormack1?