#Juneathon days 29 and 30 confined to bed!

An inglorious end to Juneathon as confined to bed with a fever. Boo :-(

#SilentSunday

#CountryKids at Ings village fete and #Juneathon Day 28

No time for a run or decent walk today as it was

the vi llage fete in Ings and I was there selling Usborne books! So instead of a formal workout my Juneathon exercise was mostly hauling the boxes of books to and from my car over a stone wall. Believe me its quite a effort to shift this lot twice in one day:

I had tried to pack a healthy picnic to reduce the temptation from all the yummy homemade cakes on sale.. Have to say my duck sushi was rather tasty! My children were each allocated their spends for the afternoon and my son headed straight for the tombola "to try and win you some wine mummy!". What he won on his first attempt really pleased him though even if its a decade before he can use it for its proper purpose:

#CountryKids Adventure Residential

My daughter used some of her savings to go on an adventure residential with her school this week. They had 2 nights away from home staying near Keswick:

It looks like it was in a beautiful location:

The only activity they were allowed to take photographs at was the archery:

She also did:

• canoeing
• ghyll scrambling
• rock climbing

It was an amazing experience from which she came back exhausted! 

#Juneathon Day 27 - An hour non stop run!

Well I surprised myself by finding running for an hour pretty easy (well except for the bit back up the hill to my estate!). I even ran it a bit quicker than on Wednesday as I had more confidence in my ability to go the distance. To complete the run I had to take the path round the back of the hill and then finished in the field behind my house:

I then had a cool down walk which I extended to over 5 minutes just so that my final workout total scraped in to the 10 k zone:

Reasons to be Cheerful #Juneathon and family fun

The lovely Jo is still our host over at Ojo's World this week then its back to me for July! I will have to be a lot more organised... Meanwhile here is why I am smiling this week:

1) Juneathon

This challenge is inspiring me to get out and run a lot more even on my normal rest days! I am getting much fitter and ran my longest non stop run yesterday. Today I had a bit of a break but even so I deliberately parked in the middle of the village and walk for some of the school run:

2) My daughter's residential

A year later than originally intended (due to having her tonsils out!) my daughter went on an adventure residential with her school. She had lots of fun doing all sorts of outdoor activities and came back exhausted! This was taken by one her class mates:

#Juneathon Day 25: My longest non stop run ever

Today the weather was a lot cooler and looked much better for re-attempting my 55 minute non-stop run:

It was quite scary thinking about how long I would have to keep going which was 5 minutes longer than my Friday run:

#Juneathon day 24 - a walk up and run down Craggy

You know I said today was a rest day? Well I decided to make most of an hour of freedom this evening to attempt a run up and around one of the hills in Staveley. The evening was cool but dry so an opportunity not to miss:

River Kent, Staveley

It's not a long way but boy is it quite a climb as it includes 98 m of ascent over 1.5 km which Strava reckons is category 4 climb! I have to admit that I walked more of this ascent than running it.. but I still was a little faster than my last attempt a year ago and apparently I'm the fastest female on Strava... It's a lovely walk if you don't fancy running it:

Nearly at the top

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#Juneathon Day 23 - I'm melting..

Why is it that sometimes by the luck of the draw your run has to take place at the hottest part of the day? Turns out that this morning from 9:30 was scorchio! I still attempted to complete my 55 minute non stop run from my 10 k runner training programme though I wasn't brimming with confidence as I set off on my warm up walk:

Barley Weir, Staveley

It was pretty warm once I got going but I had taken on board plenty of water before hand and carried some with me. The shady bits of the route were very welcome though! About 40 minutes in to running I started to find it really hard going and had a brief 30 second walk up a slope.... I then decided to try running across the back field to help complete the last 15 minutes. However my body refused to run for more than another 5 minutes I was just too exhausted by this point:

#Juneathon Day 22 A run around the field

Finding an alternative to dragging my son out with me today I headed to the field behind our house. This meant that I was quite often in view of our house but I could go a bit faster on my own. I followed a similar route to Friday but went right the way around the field rather than cutting across the corner:

#SilentSunday

#Juneathon Day 21 Fitting in fitness around the kids!

I always struggle to run at the weekend. My daughter refuses to run and my son only goes a certain distance so its not easy. So after yesterday's mini jog I thought I can do better than that...

My daughter was on a Guides event so once she had been dropped off my son and I donned our running shoes and set off along the river bank:

We headed to the playground the long way round. There were times he wanted to walk and I jogged the same section several times going backwards and forwards. He did run chunks of it such as through the mini woodland on the way to the tip:

By the time we hit the canal path he was slowing right down...

#CountryKids and #Juneathon day 20 mini run

Some times combining being a single working parent and trying to get fit by running just don't mix! Today was one of those days as I had been volunteered to go on my daughter's school trip to a local paper mill when I would normally run:

Croppers paper mill

So where on a Friday I normally clock up 7km of running I merely managed a 300 m dash from the train station back to my car:

Reasons to be Cheerful - #Juneathon and Rankings

Not only is the lovely Jo hosting this week but its her birthday so pop over to Ojos world and say hi! Here my reasons to be cheerful:

1) School trips

Its that time of the year when schools have lots of trips. My son was lucky and went to our local zoo with his class. He looked so grown up as he walked off to catch the bus:

He was lucky to go on a sunny day though it was a wee bit hot for me! Tomorrow I am off to assist his big sister's class trip to the local paper mill...

2) Juneathon and running

#Juneathon Day 18: My longest non stop run ever!

When you look out the window at 8 AM to skies this colour you know its going to be a hot one:

I knew that today's training plan was going to make work hard as I have never reached week 14 on the programme before and so I've never run continuously for the 50 minutes I was due to go:

#Juneathon day 17 - a hot day for walking!

No time for serious exercise today with housework before school and my son at Beavers this evening. So I had to make sure I found other ways to complete the Juneathon challenge. It was a hot and sticky day so an hour of housework felt almost as good as an exercise class! All that bending and stretching and moving stuff around must have been good for me.

Then I hit the pavement to walk to work. It was not very comfortable in the heat in my work uniform - think I may have to leave a set at work to change into! The weather did make the river look even calmer as I crossed it:

At work I found a couple of excuses to get up and away from my desk to run messages across the school site (some days I don't get more than 10 metres away!). This added an extra 0.5 km to my daily total - every bit counts.

#Juneathon 16 A long country run and a few short walks

It is perfect timing to have Juneathon to encourage me whilst I am working my way to 10k running fitness! Really helps to get me out there and working on my stamina. Monday's are my country run day when I leave my car near the children's school and make the most of the just over 5 miles back to our house!

I start off with a nice warm up walk over Barley Weir bridge in Staveley:

With a lack of rain the water levels are pretty low but you can see why they built mills along the River Kent throughout the village:

#Juneathon day 15 - better than nowt!

The thing about this Juneathon challenge is it makes you get creative with squeezing in exercise! Today was never going to be a good one for fitting in a lot as it was church then a lunch party... However I was determined to do something! 

So when I had to nip to the cash point I jogged instead of walking (the fact it was raining was an impetus). Turned out this only added up to 0.5 km of running on my iPhone app. This was deemed too pathetic to be my final result, but how to do more?

Next up the library dash... If you use the car park for less than 10 minutes its free - a great incentive to run to the library and back to return some DVDs... I made it back in under the time but only clocked another 300m of running.

One final chance at Asda. I parked as far from the entrance as possible then jogged across the car park to get in to do my shopping. A jog back would surely make it to 1km? No such luck the app didn't add any of this to my total for the day...

#SilentSunday

#CountryKids A stroll to K Village #Juneathon day 14

This morning we all had to go into town for eye tests:

When we finished the weather was nice so we decided to head off down to the river to walk to K Village for the art festival:

It's such a lovely place to stroll and lots of other people were out and about. We had to pause for our regular use of the flood level marker to see how tall they are getting:

#Juneathon Day 13: Another good run

Today was one of my 10 km training run days. I am now up to day 2 of week 13 of the training programme. This meant another 40 minute non stop run but only a 3 minute recovery before a final 10 minute run. I am pleased to say it felt a little bit easier than on Wednesday though I covered the same amount of ground in the 40 minutes:

My ground speed wasn't very fast compared to my best times but I am concentrating on the stamina side of running at the moment. Just hope that I have time to improve the speed side before the race on July 5th... Hopefully I will get out with my son for a short run on one day this weekend to help him learn to pace himself..

#CountryKids a sunny afternoon in the park

With the unreliability of the British summer we have to grab all the outdoor opportunities we can! So yesterday being so hot we went straight from after school club to the park, only nipping into the Spar to buy ice creams on the way.

At first the children were content in the play area whilst I read a book. Then the river lured them across the recreation ground:

Staveley recreation ground

Luckily there is a convenient bench for a grown up to relax on whilst the children enjoyed the shallow waters. They lasted an amazingly long time in water that gave them goosebumps:

The only thing to be done was run back across the grass to warm up and dry off:

Barefoot on the grass

They both needed some more play time in the park before they finally let me take them home for tea at 7PM! Let's hope we get more post school play times like this, think I need to carry towels and spare clothes in the car just in case...

Reasons to be Cheerful: Family fun and #Juneathon day 12 #R2BC

The lovely Jo is still hosting at Ojo's World so please go and say hello! I have lots of reasons to be cheerful this week. Keeping it simple with a photo version:

Grasmere Gallop

Beaver sleepover

Juneathon still on track

#Juneathon Day 11 - Longest continuous run for 5 months

Well I believe I redeemed myself some what today with my latest 10 km training run. The app had me on week 13 day 1 which upped the ante to a 40 minute non stop run! Then a 5 minute walk before there was a 10 minute final run. It was tough but I deliberately slowed my pace down a bit so that I could finish it:

It was a nice day for a run too, dry and not too hot! I then managed a little bit of walking whilst collecting the children from school:

So I am pleased with a much better day and an improved level of fitness. Just need to keep it up for another 19 days!