My 2020 Challenges To Get Fit Before 50 #fitb4fifty

Having achieved my 2019 fitness goals its time to set out my challenges for 2020 so far, especially ones that are for before I turn 50 in October! This year I am dedicating my fundraising to CLIC Sargent and have target of £595 to reach...

I am sure more will be added to this but so far I have three main challenges and a few little ones:

1) RED January

I used RED January last year to help me kick start my fitness year. It used to be all about running every day but now its about doing something that gets you active every day - phew! So I will be running, walking and working out every day this month. I started off with tail-walking parkrun and a brief dip in Windermere on New Year's Day:

Let's see how I can mix it up over the next few weeks!

2) Manchester Marathon 

Love Barrow 10k Race

So as the final push for my Manchester half training I took part in the inaugural Love Barrow 10k road race. Before our race there was a mental health mile for all ages an abilities:

Then it was time for those of us mad enough to run 10k to warm up and line up at the start. Some guys from Barrow Amateur Boxing Club decided we needed a team selfie before we ran out through the shopping centre and out towards the park:

We then undertook a zig zag course with plenty of undulations through the park:

#FitB4Fifty End of Summer Update

Diet

I have just realised that I haven't done an update on my Fit before 50 campaign since June when I started the Mediterranean diet! Since the school holidays started at the end of July my diet went back to being a lot less healthy and I've been away quite a bit so my weight crept back up so I am trying to get back on the healthier eating again with school starting back tomorrow.

I will be dusting off the Blood Sugar Diet book (affiliate link) again  I've already lost some of the holiday gain so hope that getting more veg and fish in my diet again like this will help:

Manchester Half Training 

Before going to Wales for a fortnight I had managed to increase my long run to 7.5 miles:

#FitB4Fifty A good start

Well I have realised I didn't get a chance to update after the first week of the Mediterranean diet! As with many healthy eating programmes week 1 saw a huge loss in weight of 7 lb - what a great motivation. That sort of loss even shows in my progress photos in just a week:

It made a huge difference to my parkrun time too as I knocked nearly 50 seconds off and I am back to my times from 2017 which was my second best year:

I have to say I have found week 2 a lot harder... Plenty of times when I have been rushing around or unprepared and still eating rubbish. This made for only 1.25 pounds off  (still good) and a new stone number at the front. Going to make a concerted effort for week 3 to stay off the carbs...

#FitB4Fifty Update and Going Mediterranean

So we are nearly half way through the year so its time to evaluate my fit before 50 campaign! I wanted to run more and get into better shape this year. Signing up to the RMR Challenge has given me a lot of focus and I have certainly been running a lot more. 

Cumbrian parkrun

The first part of my challenge was to Run every Cumbrian parkrun. So far I have managed Barrow, Millom, Penrith, Ford Park (Ulverston), Fell Foot, and Keswick. This leaves me with the four from the North and West of the county: Whinlatter, Workington, Cockermouth, Carlisle. My times are definitely improving (Fell Foot winter course is the hilliest one I have done which increased my times briefly). Millom lived up to its muddy reputation and of course came after I'd already run Barrow:

Lakeland Trails

The second tier of my challenge is the Lakeland Trails 10 km series. I am half way there after a muddy Cartmel and a 12.7 km Hawkshead with coffin trail. I've also taken part in the Grasmere Gallop 10 km. My next two races in the series are October as I don't race in the heat of summer (if it ever gets hot this year!). Hopefully I can carry on building on my fitness this year to keep those times falling:

#FitB4Fifty Brathay 5k

I was lucky to win two entries to the inaugural 5 km race at the Brathay Marathon this month. We had to be there very early due to parking. It did mean that we got to watch the 10 in 10 marathoners set off on their 10th marathon in 10 days - can't imagine how they do it! Then they started walking the marathoners to the start and we followed in a long colourful crocodile:

Whilst the marathoners started off on their 26.2 mile journey around Windermere we were corralled next to the road. It meant that we could just about cheer them on:

Then it was our turn to hear the gun and head off up the road towards Hawkshead. It was a good mix of runners of all ages and abilities that ran up the lane. Unlike the marathoners we were turned off the main road and into Skelwith Fold Caravan Park. This turned out to be a twisty, turny part of the route with a lot of uphill... luckily lots of the residents were lining the roads to cheer us on. It was a relief to reach the halfway mark at the end of the park which meant that it would be down hill for much of the rest of the run.

#RMRChallenge parkrun 4: Ford Park, Ulverston

After my 3rd Cumbrian parkrun a fortnight ago I only managed to get to my 4th parkrun this morning. Having checked the map I knew that the nearest one I hadn't been to was Ford Park in Ulverston (it also happened to be on my way to visit my daughter in Barrow!):

The parkrun is set in Ford Park which has the Hoad Monument for a backdrop:

The course is currently a winter route so we were going to be facing 4 laps! The RD warned us about the slippery sections where we would be crossing the grass (she was right...). Then 77 of us lined up to undertake the 5km route. It starts with a longish ascent right up to the foot of the hill before tackling the Lady's Walk along the top of the park:

#RMRChallenge Run Report 5-1-19 Penrith parkrun #loveparkrun

As we all know when you have an annual challenge like the RMR Challenge, if you don't start as you mean to go on and get the miles or events under your belt early doors its easy to get behind and fail... With that in mind I realised that I could manage to do parkrun number 3/10 this weekend at Penrith whilst en route to my son's cross country. This did entail leaving at 8 o'clock in the morning which caused a few issues:

1. I hadn't preprogrammed the sat nav before leaving the house which meant
2. My 12 year old had to programme the sat nav and as he wasn't very awake and I couldn't look we put in the postcode and not the venue which meant
3. We were taken to a housing estate in the middle of Penrith and not to the football club which meant
4. I had to park quite a way from the start and had a quick jog across the field to arrive after the briefing had started - but I did make it!

The course is very different from the ones I have done before. It is 2 laps of all the sports fields and twiddly bits at Penrith FC. The whole route is on pretty well maintained paths or in the car park:

Having run the first little stretch with Ron (the Run Director from Fell Foot - a nice surprise) I realised I had run my first kilometre under 7 minutes which is a bit too fast for me at the minute! So I slipped back into my intervals mode. Not having any hills and not knowing the course made it hard to decide where to do this, but there where some obvious turns that I used:

#RMRChallenge Run Report 2: MIllom parkun 1-1-19

So after completing Barrow parkrun I undertook a 40 minute drive in convoy to Millom for my first visit to the parkrun which has the reputation for being the slowest in the UK! It is located on the playing fields of Millom School and didn't look as muddy as reputation would suggest:

We were warned at the briefing to double knot or trainers tightly and to please use the hose at the end!! It didn't take long to discover that the green was hiding plenty of mud!

With multiple laps you soon get to learn where the boggiest bits are follow the regulars:

#RMRChallenge Run Report 1: Barrow parkun 1-1-19

I was determined to kick off my RMR Challenge in good style! So I had a sensible New Year's Eve so that I could get up at 6:45 on New Year's Day to drive over to Barrow for parkrun at 9 am. It was a lovely quiet drive along the peninsular with the sun rising. At the park I met a few familiar faces and then took my place at the back of the crowd for our run. I hadn't been to the parkrun for 2 years so it was lovely to see the views:

I knew this was only my first parkrun of 2 so I was content to take it easy and grab photos and walk up some of the many hills:

It is a multi-lap route so I got to know when the tough parts were coming and also the best views such as the cenotaph:

Run Mummy Run Challenge 2019 #RMRChallenge #FitB4Fifty

In 2018 my running dropped off due a combination of factors:

• Plantar Fasciitis which needed insoles to improve so I could get running again
• The heatwave... I really don't like temperatures above 25 C so running was definitely off the cards!
• Work - it was great getting an almost full time temporary contract but fitting in running has been hard!
• No challenges - I had only signed up for one race (which I missed due to a holiday!) so had no incentive to get out the door...

My son challenged me to run every day in December to get me back on track. It was interesting some days to squeeze a mile in every day and some times I had to do a long run to make up for having to miss a day. In the end I ran over 36 miles in 31 days which was my best month of the year:

So I have decided that I need a challenge to do better in 2019, to this end I committed to the Run Mummy Run Challenge for 2019. This allows us to choose our own targets for the year which we had to share online:

So to see those in a more legible form: