Week 3: Merry Christmas

This week Mum has apparently been "absolutely bloody knackered".  Mum has been determinedly sticking to her plan in the hope that at some point she will stop being "absolutely bloody knackered" and her legs will start working again.  Mum's legs look like they should work fine, but apparently they have turned to very sore achy lead.  I wasn't sure what lead tastes like, but a good chew revealed that lead tastes just like Mum.

It turns out that Mum being "absolutely bloody knackered" often ends up with her lying on the floor after she's been running.  I assume because she wants me to lick her until she feels better.  Or nibble.  Or maybe just lie on her and make warming smells.  I'm good at warming smells, everyone tells me so.

Mum has also been doing lots of interesting things with sticks.  I'm not allowed to bring sticks inside, but Mum has special indoor sticks.  I like these, they're good sticks.  She has a stick to roll on sore muscles, a fat stick to roll sore muscles on, and an absolutely massive and very heavy stick which is meant to make her stronger and less scrawny.  Mum often tells me I'm a scrawny wuffle, but Mum is in no position to talk in my opinion, so I can see why she needs this stick.  The really big stick is annoyingly hard to move when it's on the floor, but when Mum lifts it up and down in the air we have a wonderful game where I try and grab onto it.  Or sometimes Mum's pony tail.  Or just her bum.  I know Mum loves these games because of how she uses all her special words and goes bright red, just like she does with all our best games.

Mum started the week with a tempo run, which apparently went quite well, but was harder than it should have been.  Then something bad happened.  Her bike broke.  I didn't know why this was bad at first because Mum says her bike is the work of the devil which will almost certainly result in her death and at least makes her lady parts hurt, but apparently the broken bike meant Mum had to run the four 1.25 mile trips a day that she normally bikes as well as actually training.  Mum says it's too bitty to be real training, but still tires her legs out.

Her interval session was apparently shockingly slow, but Mum reassured herself she'd got something out of it by apparently trying to run with "really good form" even when shattered.  I assume this means not tripping over or treading in dog poo, I mean running is running after all?

By the time Mum got to her favourite run of the week - parkrun - Mum was under no illusions about the state of her legs.  As this wasn't meant to be a hard parkrun Mum decided to make herself feel better by joining in the festive fun and dress up as some sort of weird Mrs Christmas thing.  Mum couldn't find the top half of her costume so she just wore her red parkrun t-shirt and the wonderful frilly tutu which I was absolutely not allowed to chew.  Really frilly, really bobbing everywhere, really awesome, deliciously awesome.  Apparently Mum had forgotten what a pain in the backside the tutu is to run in, and had also forgotten saying she'd never run in it again.  She also hadn't realised how heavy it had got.  How had a tutu got so much heavier for just a year in the loft? 

That just left the long run which Mum had to do in the evening this week.  This week Mum said she had to run 16 miles at a fairly easy pace.  The only easy pace Mum could imagine at this point was a walk and that was going to take too long because she needed to get home and stroke my tired wuffle ears.  Mum doesn't normally do long runs in the evening, and apparently she got very hungry and wobbly legged.  Mum said she had to apply something called "rule 5" which is not very politically correct, but she got it done, and ignored her legs' pleas to slow down.  Good job Mum, need to get home to your wuffle whose ears were being woefully neglected!

After running 48 miles last week, Mum is now having a cut back week.  This means she'll run a lot less and hopefully her legs will recover.  Conveniently this coincides with Christmas, and Mum is planning to indulge in a glass or two of wine and some cheese.  Neither of these things work well with running for some reason I can't quite work out.  I can certainly run just fine when I've been eating cheese!

Mum and I have been blown away by the generosity of the so many people who have sponsored Mum on her slightly odd quest to run 26.2 miles around Manchester, but it is Christmas, and there are needy Vizlas out there who really would benefit from any donation big or small, so if you haven't and you do feel able, please put a paw on the big red button and send a couple of quid to Vizsla Rescue UK.

Merry Christmas, from me and Mum!

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