Mother's Day - Day 3

Like many people for whom today was Mother's Day it was incredibly surreal. With social isolation and distancing I wasn't able to give my mum her card even though she only lives 1 mile from our house:

To cheer me up I joined the global trend of putting a rainbow in your window as a symbol of hope. There is also a virtual Easter egg hunt. Just hope the paint comes off as easily as folks say: 

In order to raise a few smiles I spent the entire day dressed as an elf! It did make folks laugh on the video chats I had... Of course going out for a Mother's Day lunch was off the cards. I made myself a ploughman's and sat out on the lawn for a picnic. My son also tried to teach me how to play Magic the Gathering:

Running in circles - Day 2

So it was our second full day of being isolated at home. I am trying to make sure we don't get stuck in a rut - even if it is just 48 hours in! I obviously can't get out for a run and haven't got a treadmill so I decided to recreate a parkrun as gardenrun. Here is my first timers' briefing:

I have to say that 155 laps was mentally tough and I couldn't get up much speed either! It did make me feel better though (and entertained my neighbour!):

Yesterday my son seemed to be non-stop eating so after my run I cooked us both bacon and scrambled eggs which kept him going for longer. Then I had another virtual coffee morning with friends.

Thoughts on isolation - Day 1

As of last night my son and I are in quarantine as his coughing is flagged as potential coronavirus. I am trying to make the best of a bad situation and fill my time by re-activating this neglected blog! We have at least 14 days at home so I will try to do more regular posts...

Yesterday when I realised that we have suspected corona I was scared and angry.

Scared that we may have shared a virus that is dangerous to those less healthy than ourselves whilst being told to keep going to school.

Angry because we hadn’t been able to get a normal food shop in because of people panicking.

Today I’m feeling loved and blessed. I was advised how to get hold of our missing fruit and veg by ordering a delivery from Parsons, so now we won't get scurvy. The man delivering it had even lived in our house years ago!:

Another friend was going out to the Lakeland Farm Visitors Centre farm shop and got us enough meat for a week:

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 

Run Mummy Run Challenge 2019 the results #RMRChallenge #FitB4Fifty

Way back in January I made my RMR challenge pledge with Run Mummy Run so it is time to see how I have done on my 3 pledges:

1) Run all 10 Cumbrian parkruns

This one started off so well with the New Year's Day Double at Barrow and Millom. I then combined my son's cross country with Penrith and visiting a relative in hospital with Ford (Ulverston). So i was looking good in January with 4/10 of complete.

I then had a couple of trips back to my home parkrun at Fell Foot. There was then a break due to other commitments and races and it wasn't until my son had a race at Threkeld that I managed to run Keswick parkrun.

It wasn't until the school holidays that I made it to Carlisle parkrun by combining it with our drive to Scotland. We then sneaked a cheeky Scottish parkrun in on our way home at Victoria park, Glasgow. My 9th different parkrun was not in Cumbria either as I ran at Dinton Pastures outside Reading whilst visiting friends.

My next Cumbrian parkrun (8/10) was Whinlatter in September, one of the hardest in the UK, which was stunning but tough. This left me with the two that are the hardest to get to due to the geography of Cumbria. I have decided that these have to wait for warmer weather and we can camp over the night before.

So to make up for it I ran 3 other parkruns which are either closer or near where we were visiting over the last 2 weeks: Tring, Morecambe Prom and Lancaster! That gave me a total of 13 different parkruns this year. In fact the only one on this image I didn't do this year us Lanhydrock:

2) Complete the Lakeland Trails 10 km series: Cartmel, Hawkshead, Helvellyn and Ullswater