Here we go again

So, here we go again, training proper begins for Race for Life 2011.

First a little recap:

• I am a big fat girl. I founded Team Run Fat Girl Run with my best friends in 2008 when we did our first Race for Life.
  
• I'm doing a 5k Race for Life at Nottingham Holme Pierrepont on Sunday 31 July - 12 weeks away.
• I had my second baby 5 months ago and between now and race day I will go back to work, finish my MA dissertation and see Take That twice (very important).
• I go a fightening shade of beetroot at the merest exertion never mind distance run.
  
• My mum has brain cancer.
  

I've been signed up for this year's race for a while but haven't got round to training until now. I always seem to find some excuse but today they ran out and so I downloaded the NHS Couch to 5k Week 1 podcast, donned an old Biffy Clyro tea and hesitantly set off.

I actually think the NHS are quietly brilliant at this community and self-help stuff. I blogged my second pregnancy for NHS Choices and found it invaluable in helping me get through anti-natal depression and other complications. I'd heard of the Couch to 5k scheme and just from the name it sounded tailor made for me. I am a couch potato, I do have a 5k race to do and I have more than 9 weeks to do it - hoorah!

As it started playing and I walked through the meadow at the end of our road I did my 5 minute warm up walk as a plethora of wild flowers glistened from the recent rain at my feet. Clover, buttercups, daisies of many sizes, a few blue bells beneath the trees, and the air heavy with the threat of rain and the heady scent of hawthorn blossom. It was all quite beautiful and I didn't even notice the time passing.

Out on the road I managed the eight sets of 60 second gentle runs and 90 second brisk walks without keeling over. It got harder toward the end but the podcast is a bit like having a personal trainer and the encouraging instructions of when to run, when to walk really helped me make it through. Coming in at 30 minutes and being expected to do it three times before moving onto week 2 seems achievable to me - even with a hectic life and lack of motivation!

So, I've got started. With 12 weeks to go I think I might actually have a chance of keeping up with my fellow team members (who aren't fat at all but are very kind to me) Vena and Lauren. They've both done this course in less than 30 minutes before so I've got a lot of work to do!

I came into this thinking that I can't do it. I'm too fat, too unfit, too lazy, too busy. What I know though is that I won't ever achieve running 5k if I don't try. And that's what I'd say to people who say Cancer Research won't solve anything, that cancer will always kill. We won't find a cure if we don't try.

You can sponsor me online (warm fuzzy feeling guaranteed).
And you can get the free NHS Couch to 5k plan too.

Finally - a plea. The number of women taking part in Race for Life this year is down and Cancer Research UK are desperate for more people to sign up and raise money to try and find a cure. To all the women who are reading this please, please sign up to a race near you. If you sign up to Nottingham Holme Pierrepont you'd be more than welcome to join us. And to the men, please encourage any women you know - partners, mothers, daughters, sisters, colleagues - to sign up too.

You can find races and sign up online on the Race for Life website.

All signed up

So, it's all official. I am embracing my official Race for Life alter-ego 'Sarah Champagne-Perspiration' and getting ready to run around Nottingham Holme Pierrepont on Sunday 31 July 2011.

I'll be joined by at least one other member of Team Run fat Girl, Run and will be using the NHS Couch to 5k to get race ready. No, really, this year is the year I *will* do some training!

As I've had my postnatal check up and am back on the weightloss waggon as well (feel free to join me up here, the lettuce is...crispy) it seems as good a time as any to get my wobble on the road. I'll blog the highs, lows and many 'meh' moments I'm bound to encounter over the next 6 months here.

Wish me luck and if you have a few spare pennies at any point you can donate them to me here: http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/sarahlay2011

First steps

I've been out for a little walk with the baby in his pram today. We didn't go very far - about a half mile round route but as it was the first time I'd been out since having him I didn't want to push it.

It felt great to be out in the open air and it wasn't too hard. The hills were challenging enough and my back was aching by the time we got back (I still get pain where the spinal went in for my c-section). I'm confident we can build it up though and make it part of the training for Race for Life.

Registration opens next week so I'm having a last think about which event to enter and will be hassling the other Fat Girls to see whether I can talk them into it again!

Top five songs on today's soundtrack:
Junk Shop Clothes - The Auteurs; Lazarus - The Boo Radleys; Mancunian Way - Take That; Other Too Endless - Polly Scattergood; Near Wild Heaven - REM.

Getting set for 2011

Happy New Year everyone! Made any new year's resolutions? Have you pledged to eat less chocolate, take more exercise, get off the fags & booze, marry a member of Take That??? Yeah, me too... (Howard Donald, obv).

My focus is on the first two resolutions - pretty much staples in my annual portfolio of good intentions. I'm no further back than I was last January, which is a relief seeing as I spent most of 2010 pregnant (my baby is now three weeks old) and seem to have managed not to gain any weight (this time, first time was a different story!).

So, I'm trying to wean myself off the Christmas excess and the cravings I gave into when pregnant and make a plan for when I get the exercise all clear in about three weeks. And of course my thoughts turned to setting a 2011 Team Run Fat Girl, Run goal for myself.

The obvious place to start is with Race for Life. This will be the fourth year I've signed up and taken part to raise money for Cancer Research UK. I'm sure some of the other girls will be running (walking / stumbling) alongside me.

Last year myself, Vena, Kelly and Lauren faced the monster 10km route at Kedleston Hall in Derby. We made it round despite having forgotten to train at all and I feel intensely proud of us all. However, I'm thinking of going back to where I started my Race for Life participation and tackling the 5km course at Holme Pierrepont, Nottingham again.

With this in mind I'm also moving my blogging for NHS Choices from the pregnancy blog to the Couch to 5km blog. I'm going to give their training plan a good go and hopefully make it round the course in my best time yet! *

I'm also thinking about setting a goal for later in the year. I'm open to suggestions here - commitments mean I can't do any of those amazing challenges abroad but if anyone can suggest a challenge I could sign up for I'd love to hear it (leave me a comment, yeah?).

While I don't know what I'd like to do I do know why I want to do it. Last April my mum was diagnosed with a brain tumour, a cancerous brain tumour, a brain tumour for which there is no cure. She's undergone surgery and chemo and radiotherapy and all the side effects of those. However, we're now concentrating on whatever time is left. This situation haunts me at night while I'm awake feeding the baby so signing up for a challenge in which I can raise money for the hospitals or charities which are helping mum (and dad) is a way of creating positivity in a situation where there is no happy ending.

So - any ideas? Any body want to take a challenge alongside me? Anyone is welcome to be a 'fat girl' - you don't even have to be fat, or a girl! If you'd like to do a Race for Life or other challenge and blog about your progress here let me know. I'd welcome any support I can get - I have the feeling I'll be struggling with more than the physical training at times this year.

Leave me a comment with suggestions for challenges, words of wisdom or requests to be a 'fat girl'.

* You can see this pledge in posts at the start of every year we've been running this blog.

In the meantime I dust off the old Team moniker and sign off, yours with good intentions, Saira Champagne-Perspiration. xxx