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 rol...

Mum has been a lot happier this week. Mum has apparently made peace with being a little less fit than this time last year.  Mum has also stopped being ill.  Sadly, she has also stopped making all the interesting smells.  I was quite enjoying those. Mum's first three runs this week all went completely to plan.  This makes Mum happy.  She likes a good plan.  I like a good plan too.  I have lots of plans.  Today I planned to bark at the cats, and I did.  I planned to chew Mum's hat, the one with the very big pom pom, and I did that too.  I also like Mum's plan.  The lovely chewable tasty one which would be so soothing to my poor teething gums.  Mum is still keeping it out of reach.  So out of reach in fact that she can't even see it.  That's OK because she has it committed to memory.  This does beg the question, why not just let your poor little wufflestuff have it?  Apparently this is not goin...

Well finally, Mum got out and did some running and got wonderfully sweaty.  There's nothing better than a tired Mum lying on the floor with her dangly ponytail right there, and a fine crust of salt ready for the nibbling.  Sometimes she even comes home with horse poo on her shoes.  My Mum is great. Mum doesn't think her first week of training has gone well, though. Mum has carefully marked her completed runs off on her planner, which has made her a bit sad.  Apparently a number of them have not gone entirely to plan. Mum has also been poorly, and trying to deny it.  I know Mum's been poorly because Mum has been making the most delicious smells that even rival mine and spending a lot of time in the toilet.  Mum says I'm not to go on about that part but seriously, fantastically, delicious smells.  She's also been sick quite a few times, which isn't nice.  I once had to be sick lots after I ate something off the floor I wasn't me...

With less than a week to go before training starts Mum has declared her training plan complete.  I did briefly get my jaws on the planner but Mum tricked it off me by dumping the whole pot full of emergency training treats onto the floor in one go.  She also went very pale so I licked her a lot and wagged my tail, which obviously made everything fine.  It's not a complete loss because while Mum's been jealously guarding the precious plan I've repeatedly stolen her favourite boots with the soft furry bits inside which feel soooo good when I shove my nose inside them for a good old chew. I'm still not entirely sure what this marathon thing involves.  Mum is very pleased with her plan, it's covered in post it notes - which I did manage to steal half a pack of - and is colour coded and incredibly neat.  If running a marathon involves lots of neat writing, post it notes and colour coding I am sure Mum will have no problems.  Mum has also stock piled a...

Despite protestations to the contrary, Mum has decided to run another marathon in the spring.  Mum apparently wasn't going to do a marathon next spring, in fact she agreed so with Dad, but then her friends all signed up for marathons and she got marathon envy.  Mum's marathon last year wasn't a complete success.  It was OK, she says, and she enjoyed it and was relatively pleased with her time, but secretly Mum was quite disappointed.  Apparently Mum was "a bit of a twat", whatever that is, and injured herself trying to run on frozen slush, and she missed quite a bit of training.  Mum had to run the marathon a bit slower than she'd have liked, and this is niggling at her, a lot.  Mum thinks she could run a marathon faster than she did last year, and she'd like to have another go.   Which brought her back to the deal with Dad, either a puppy or a spring marathon.  Dad apparently doesn't object to the marathon as such, but he does object ...