I’ve been working with the lovely Tess for just over a year and we had the chance to chat recently about her tremendous progress during the first year of her training program. I asked her to take a moment to put it into her own words so here you go:
So, I have been training with Teejay over a year now, and I can say I’ve loved all of it – well apart from lunges, and that stupid stretchy torture rope…
This blog is dedicated to Claire, Tinners, Jules, Jeffers, Bru, Luca, Debs, Bev, Chelle and the Lady Lund. If Carlsberg did support crews…you’d be it. Thank you for making it all so much fun.
Yes, I went right to the very edge of my capability with that half ironman distance triathlon in Chester a few weeks ago. Or did I?
Well it certainly felt like it in the closing 4km of the run. When you’ve been on the moving constantly for just under 7 hours and everything starts to hurt you’ve got to have a good answer for the question: why am I putting myself through this?
So, I’ve been banging on for a few months about training for a long triathlon challenge (Half Ironman Distance) and I’ve been learning some pretty interesting stuff along the way so I thought it was worth checking in with an update.
There were lots of reasons to take on a challenge like this: 1) Triathlons are fun and I always say you’re more likely to stay engaged with exercise if you’re having fun 2) I ask a lot of my clients during their sessions – I’m constantly pushing them to find new limits and I want them to see me push my own limits as well 3) I tend to do better at longer, harder events where the challenge is actually getting to the end rather than how fast you get to the end 4) I wanted a challenge that was big enough to really scare me, that I had to look at and really wonder how on earth I was going to finish so that clients would see me go through that process and start thinking about how to approach their own challenges.
Goodness me, wasn’t the London Marathon just brilliant yesterday? The elites are always amazing – they go faster over a full marathon that I’ve ever gone in half marathon!!! What I really like about the Marathon though, is the human stories. The people who run for the most touching reasons and raise money for some really important causes. The ‘everyman’ for whom running is not a natural thing to be enjoyed but a complete slog. This year the headline charity was the Royals project ‘Heads together’ which aims to remove the stigma around mental health by normalising the conversation.
Our very own Claire H has been at it again! Not content with one marathon, she’s went ahead and ran an ultra-marathon two weeks ago and then Manchester Marathon last weekend. At the end of the run I asked her how she was feeling and she couldn’t put it into words at the time (well not polite ones anyway), but after a few days, she was able to put her thoughts together and work out what she learned from a challenge like that.
I’m not sure what possessed me last autumn to sign up for Manchester Marathon. For those who know me, my signing up for a marathon was not an unusual occurrence.
However, the 2017 Manchester marathon, was on 2 April. Seven days after I was taking part in the 50K Canalathon. Yes, I would be attempting to run 26.2 miles just seven short days after I’d run 50k or approximately 31 miles. What was I thinking?
