2013 - Resolutions and more

Happy New Year!  I hope you're all recovering from whatever you got up to last night.

The first few days in January are usually a time for people to think about what wholesale changes they'd like to make, and then persevere with them as much as possible.  I wrote last year about how I'd been in a similar boat myself a number of times and all my good intentions had fallen by the wayside by late January.

There's traditionally talk of making major lifestyle changes which is usually difficult to achieve.  Not through lack of desire per se, but through the difficulty in overhauling your day to day life and sustaining those changes.  I'm as skeptical as the next man when people say that's what they're going to do, but this year, that's exactly what I'll be attempting.

At the end of this month, I'll be starting a two year clinical study to see if insulin pumps help people manage diabetes better than multiple daily injections (MDI).  This will effectively mean a brand new type of medication, a brand new way of looking after myself and a lot of other changes that affect my day-to-day life.

I wrote in the the very first post on this blog how I do my best not to let being diabetic define my entire life, it's merely a part of who I am as a person.  Whilst that remains the case, a complete change in a medical regime I've been used to for over 10 years will take some getting used to I suspect.

With that at the back of my mind, I've only made 7 resolutions this year but I'm hoping to keep them all (as opposed to the 8/10 from 2012)

1.  Run the Sheffield Half Marathon and the Great Yorkshire Run

As regular readers will know, the Sheffield Half is my nemesis and I'm determined to conquer it this year.  The Great Yorkshire Run eluded me last year as I'd pushed myself a little too much and wasn't able to compete when the day came.

2.  Raise £500 for charity

After raising £1,500 last year, I'm taking an admittedly more modest approach this year (but then again I'm not running the London Marathon this year either).  I'd like to be able to do more for charities that are important to me, but at the moment, I'm not sure how to do that other than run around and ask people to sponsor me for it.  Hopefully I'll meet my target this year

3.  See 12 gigs

This is the same as last year - I just like to be able to have a night out once a month so I'm hoping there'll be some great live shows to see this year

4.  Read 11 books

Slightly more ambitious than last year's 10 - I ought to read more and having got some excellent books for Christmas, I'm confident I'll make this one.

5.  Do a photo-a-day project

This is something I've wanted to do for a long time and I've never motivated myself to do it.  I enjoy taking pictures and I'm probably quite reasonable at it.  I'd like to become a lot more accomplished over the next 12 months and I think this will be a good way to do that.  I'll be posting the results on a separate blog if you want to keep track of them

6.  Keep my weight below 190lbs all year

There's a technicality that means I've got to get my weight back under 190 first (having lost 32lbs last year, a few have crept back on over Christmas).  This one in itself is fairly ambitious as I've never maintained a weigh I'm happy with for more than about 6 months.  I think the fact that I'll be in the clinical trial will help motivate me here.

7.  Run 450 miles

That doesn't sound like too much - less than 10 miles a week shouldn't be that hard when you think about it.  But I'm conscious I could end up injured again and I want a target that is attainable without having to put my body on the line in order to meet it.   I'll be trying for 2/3 runs a week and supplementing that with sessions on the exercise bike at home.

So there you have it.  That's my goals for the year in a few short paragraphs.  It may not sound like too much (and I feel a little like I've copped out), but I think I have to be mindful of what else will be happening this year.

Once again, I hope you all have a wonderful 2013 and that you manage to keep any resolutions you've made.

Andy

Half Year Review

Whilst the title of this week's post sounds like one of those awful things your manager makes you do at work, I'm hoping that this will be slightly less turgid.

I'm going to review the first 6 months of 2012 against my New Year's Resolutions to see how well things are progressing.  It's obviously not the most accurate barometer of success/failure, but I it's better than nothing right?

I was searching for my earlier post where I discussed my resolutions when I realised I never revealed what they were so apologies for that.

1. Run the London Marathon

Well this is a pretty easy one to tick off.  As anyone who read this blog before May this year will tell you, this has been my main goal for quite some time and I can proudly say that I managed it without too many problems in the end.  I've bored you to death with tales of the marathon for a few months now so I won't go over it again.  If you're not familiar with it all, here's a link to the post-race blog

2. Raise at least £1000 for charity

This is another one that I'm proud to say that I've achieved, though I definitely couldn't have done it without the help and support of so many people.  My marathon fundraising brought in a total of £1500 for Diabetes UK and The Children's Hospital Charity in Sheffield for which I'm incredibly grateful.

I've definitely caught the running bug though (despite my appalling lack of fitness since the marathon) and I've entered into two more 10k runs this year.  I'll be doing the brilliantly named Cannon Hall Run in August which is a course from Barnsley town centre to Cannon Hall.  I'll then be doing the Great Yorkshire Run in September which will start go from Sheffield city centre to Hillsborough Stadium and back.

Once again I'm running for the two charities above, hoping to raise a modest £200 in total.  If you'd like to donate, you can do so by visiting my fundraising page

3. Get a photograph published or sold

This is a difficult one in many respects.  I've struggled for both the inspiration and motivation to use my camera as lot this year which is something I'm determined to change in the second part of this year.

I was fortunate enough to be able to take some press photos for a Wakefield band call Skint & Demoralised for the launch of their new album earlier on this year.  A few of those got used as promo pictures as part of that launch which I was really pleased with.  You can see those photos here.

I'm hopeful that something else may come up later on this year but I'll try and get more pictures out there which I've always been a bit nervous of before.  I'll leave this resolution half ticked off for now.

4. Carry on training to run the Sheffield Half Marathon 2013

I've recently got back out running after a good few weeks off after the marathon (down to injury rather than apathy).  I've forgotten how hard it was to build up a base level of fitness and I mentioned a few weeks ago about how I felt like I was starting over in many respects.

Running is really my only form of regular exercise and so I'm determined to keep to about 10 miles a week for the rest of this year which should give me a solid platform to build up to the Sheffield Half Marathon next year.

For those of you not familiar with my history with this race, I injured myself whilst training for it in 2008 and the recovery took quite a while.  I see it as my nemesis a bit now and so I'm determined to beat it next year

5. See at least 12 gigs

I enjoy live music a lot and so I struck a compromise with my wife that sees us get at least one night out a month.  She meets up with friends and I go out to see a band.

So far this year I've seen 7 gigs and I have 3 more on the calendar so I'm confident of meeting this one by the end of the year.  It's difficult to pick a favourite as they've all been different, but Mile Kane in Leeds, Ladyhawke in Sheffield and Jay-Z & Kanye West in Manchester could possibly be my top 3

6. Read at least 10 books

I completely realise that this sounds like a pretty poor target but I'd wager that I probably read less than 10 last year and that was something I wanted to change this year.  Whilst 10 is a modest target, I think it's achievable and I think that's the main thing.

I've ploughed through 6 so far which isn't too bad if you consider the first four months of this year were almost exclusively spent running.  Reading Guitar Man by Will Hodgkinson inspired my Birthday Resolutions and I've just finished reading Just Kids by Patti Smith which I enjoyed immensely.

I currently have three more on the go but I'm focussing on Whoops by John Lanchester which is non-fiction and explains how the world financial crisis cmae about.

7. Continue my blog after the marathon

This sounds like a bit of a cop-out resolution but I really enjoyed blogging about the marathon and the training and I wanted to continue writing this (albeit less frequently) if I could.

I'm finding things to write about a bit difficult to come by at times, but I'd like to think I'm doing a decent job of only writing when I have something to say rather than blogging every week just for the sake of it.

The one year anniversary of We Were Promised Hoverboards is on the 9th of September so hopefully I'll be able to make it through to that and have something to celebrate.

8. Support the community via sponsorship/donations etc

This came about because I was asked to support a few things in my local community last year and I wanted to try and do that again if possible.

I'll be honest in saying that I've not done much on this so far this year but I'm hoping I'll be able to contribute and make a difference before the year is out.

I did recently sponsor a charity festival in Harrogate which allowed a friend to raise about £1400 for charity so I suppose that would count.  Hopefully I can do something closer to home in the next few months.

9. Expand the smaller areas of my company

This is another one where I haven't really done anything worth shouting about.  I work for myself doing consultancy work for the most part, but I've tried to develop a bit of a sideline in doing web design and some photography.

As I alluded to in point 3 above, I haven't really done as much there as I'd like and, despite some advertising, there's not been much call for the web design service I'm offering.

Again, I think there's the opportunity to change this before the year is out, but I'll not be too disappointed if this is the one that gets away as my main line of work takes up most of my time.

10. Make some friends

This sounds like a bit of a poor resolution as well, but it's not without ground.  I moved back to my home town early last year and whilst everything looks incredibly familiar, the people I used to know are now really just Facebook friends and nothing more.

Working for myself means I'm often changing jobs and so developing "work friends" as is normal in most jobs is a bit more difficult for me.

I've been really lucky to connect with a good group of people on Twitter who all share a common love of Sheffield Wednesday and we've all got together before a few games this year.  I'm sure we'll all manage that again a few times this coming season too.



So really that's how the first half of my year is going against my "plan".  I've got the original list of resolutions taped up against my oven at home and it's good to have them visible as a bit of a reminder.  I'm not convinced I'll be able to tick all 10 off by New Year's Eve, but if I get through more than half then I'll be veyr happy.

Thanks for reading - appreciate I've gone on a bit there.  Hope you enjoyed it.

Resolutions

Hello again


First up, apologies that I've become a bit erratic at posting lately, I will endeavour to do better in the coming weeks.  I've started two previous posts that have been abandoned either due to time constraints or the fact that they just sounded boring.  You deserve better.


So the most recent things of note that have occurred are that I visited Krakow in Poland and I turned 31.  As it happened these things actually overlapped but that was more of a coincidence than anything else.  We'd all gone over for the wedding of some friends which was a really incredible day.  As we were taking Violet, we'd decided to make a week of it and have a proper holiday.


Overall, it was about as exhausting as I expected but it meant that we could just take things a bit easier (read: spend lots of time in cafes) and enjoy the time away a bit.   If you've never been, I can recommend it, though I think 7 nights was a bit too long.  I'll talk a bit more about Krakow and my visit to Auschwitz in a separate post.


Being away did give me time to do some things I don't usually make time for when I'm at home - the most obvious of which is reading.  I managed to get through three books in 6 days which was very enjoyable, and one of which prompted this post.


I did a post at the end of December that touched on things that I had to look forward to in 2012 and I also made 10 New Year's Resolutions which didn't feature in that blog.  I'll be doing a half year review of how they're going sometime this month.  Celebrating the 10th anniversary of my 21st got me thinking a bit.  Training for the marathon obviously meant using a lot of discipline and I figured I should be able to use that for other things too.


And then I read "Guitar Man" by Will Hodgkinson.  It's no secret that I'm a big music fan, and it's equally no secret that my biggest regret is never learning to play guitar.   The book is a true story of a man (Will) who decides, at 34 to learn guitar and play a live gig of sorts in 6 months.  Now obviously I'm not that crazy, but I've decided that if he can do it, then there's no reason I can't try either.  I'm horribly uncoordinated but I'm going to give it a go.  And so, Birthday Resolutions were born.


I've made two as it happens, learn guitar and learn Italian.  Languages were something I always had a knack for when I was at school, and after stumbling through some Polish, I decided that I should be able to give an "easier" language  a try and get to a decent standard.  Plus I have all the free CDs I collected off a paper before I went to Rome on my honeymoon.


So today I have made the first steps in trying to achieve these two goals.  I dug the battered old classical guitar (I want a new acoustic but Mrs B is yet to be convinced I'll stick with this for more than a month) out of the wardrobe and restrung and tuned it.  It's worth pointing out that this thing is definitely older than I am but it makes a decent noise.   I've also put all the Italian CDs on my iPod and started going through them in the odd spare 15 minutes.


I'm under no illusions that any of this will be easy.  I've tried to learn guitar countless times throughout my life and I've never got anywhere.  But I've got a feeling this time it might be different.


I'll try not to post relentless updates about this stuff because it will be a slow process.  But I'll check in from time to time, to give myself the motivation to keep going if nothing else.


Whilst I'm on a music post, if you haven't listened to any of the new albums by Ladyhawke, Richard Hawley, Jack White, Citizens! or Howler then I'd give them as spin as I'm really enjoying them.

And finally, on June 16th I'll be at a mini-festival in Pannal near Harrogate that a friend of mine has organised to support the MNDA after she lost her mother last year.  If you're in the area and fancy parting with £15 to see 6 or 7 bands over 2 stages as well as talks by authors and chefs etc then you reserve tickets by e-mailing thumb.to.the.string@gmail.com and then paying for them on the door.  There's a Facebook page and here are the details of the event.  I'll be behind the bar for a bit of the day as well as roadie-ing so if you do come down, please say hi.

Thanks for sticking with me a bit there.  Hopefully I've not turned you all away permanently.

Talk to you all soon

Andy

The final countdown

Training miles completed this week: 15
Total training miles completed: 223
Training miles left: 9
Training runs left: 2

Hello again

I'll start with an apology this week.  I didn't write a post last week and that was essentially for no other reason than I was sulking a bit about not running.

A day or so after my 20 mile run, I started to feel a bit of pain in my foot so I took a conscious decision to miss a run and let it heal a bit.  There's obviously no point running for the sake of it - an injury this close to the marathon needs to be looked after.  I thought I could miss one run and be back out to properly start my tapering.

Unfortunately I got a migraine which floored me for about 4 days (I think I've mentioned these before) and so I ended up missing another training slot.  That left me feeling a bit downbeat about the whole thing and I didn't feel that blogging any of that negativity would be particularly cathartic.  But I'm back now with my penultimate blog before race day.

I've managed 3 runs this week totalling 15 miles which is encouraging.  I did 4 miles last Thursday and followed that up with 5 and 6 miles.  It's a bit of a twist on the taper plan I had in mind, but I need to bear the injuries in mind and so I've opted for an extra shorter run rather than doing, say, 12 miles and reducing down after that.  I just need to make sure my legs still worked and I'm happy to report that they do.

Skipping the two runs last week has meant I've developed a bit of a complex about being underprepared.  I'm not sure how much of that is the "to be expected" pre race nerves, and how much of it I really believe.  By the time I get on a train to London at the end of next week, I'll have already run 232 miles - equivalent to about 9 full marathons.  I'd like to think that stands me in good stead but at the same time I have a nagging doubt that having done no great distance for a few weeks will be a bit of a set-back.  Hopefully it's the former.

I think nerves are natural at this stage.  I'm venturing into the unknown in more ways than one.  Obviously I've never run a marathon before and equally, I'm running on a route I'm wholly unfamiliar with.  I've also not run with anyone in this sort of race environment for about 17 years (The Rother Valley 10k for those of you in Sheffield).  All this is easily overcome I suppose - I'd just not really considered all these factors until recently.

I'm going to have to focus on my pace in the early miles - I don't want to set off too quickly and burn out too soon.  I know the first 5 or 6 miles can be done at around a 10 min/mile pace and I should hopefully be able to replicate my 11.5 min mile (ish) time to 20 miles.  That gives me a good guide to where I should be and when.  As I've stated all along though, as long as I get round before the medals run out (6pm) then I'll be ecstatic.

I'm considering Google-mapping the route before I set off.  I'm not sure if that's a bit OTT or whether I'll genuinely feel calmer for having visualised the route at least once before I set off.  In all likelihood, I'll probably get bored/frustrated after 2 miles of trying, but it could be worth a shot.


There's been some movement on the fundraising this last 2 weeks which is excellent!  Current total is £837.50 which is another £130 since I last blogged.  The generosity everyone has shown has been incredible!  I do still have some more donations that I've been promised as well so I hope I'll be able to get very close to the £1,000 target.  If you're thinking about donating then please know that even a couple of quid will make a difference - you can click on the subtle fundraising link above, or the less subtle one at the end of this post to donate.  Again, I can't thank people enough for what they've already done - I couldn't have wished for more. 

As always, all money that I raise is being split equally between Diabetes UK and The Sheffield Children's Hospital Charity - two very worthy causes. The Children's Hospital money will be going to help fund a summer camp for children with diabetes which is very worthwhile.

I'll blog next week after my last training run which in itself feels like quite an emotional milestone.  I'm going to do a bit of a "Marathon Training by numbers" post which will either be a bit interesting or not half as fun as I thought it would be - who knows?

As with the running, I feel a bit rusty with the blogging so hopefully this has been a moderately interesting post for me to return with.  As I say, I'll try and sum everything up next week and perhaps talk about where this blog goes after the marathon is all done, because to be perfectly honest with you, I don't have an answer for that just yet.

Thanks for sticking with me today and if you've been with me since the start, thank you for making it this far.  I really appreciate all the support you've all given me.

Take care and have a good week

Andy

You can donate at any time by clicking on this fundraising link

2011 - A Review

Hello.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas.  And allow me to wish you an early 'Happy New Year' as well.

This is almost certainly going to be a longer post than normal so bear with it a bit.  I'm going to do my usual stuff about running and all that but finish off with a bit of a review of 2011 and a look forward to next year.

I mentioned in my last blog that I had three runs left before New Year.  Sadly that didn't quite turn out to be true.  I was all geared up to go running on Christmas Eve morning but I'd been feeling a bit more of an ache in my foot than was 'normal' so I decided to give it a miss.  I beat myself up about it for the rest of the day, but I think it was the right thing to do.  It seems like there's no point doing all the hard work just to be belligerent and run when I don't think my body can take it.

I did, however, get up at 6:45 this morning and managed 4 miles in a respectable 46 minutes.  The route is below, although I can't stress enough how steep two hills are over this distance.  Fortunately, these coincided with a couple of walk breaks so that was quite good...

It was nice to see the sun rising as I made it to the top of the first hill.  It was also nice to think I only had a mile left by that point as well.  Running on the flat feels really good and I managed a bit of downhill running as well today which felt OK.  I suppose training on the slopes of Sheffield can only be beneficial for the relatively flat course in London.

I'm starting to feel the after effects a bit more now and I'll have an ache and a bit of pain for a few days after each run now where before that wasn't the case.  With that in mind, I've decided to cut back down to 2 runs a week for a little while and see if that helps.  It'll make training a bit more difficult but as I've said a few times already, it was never going to be easy.  

I've negotiated Christmas Day and Boxing Day meals relatively unscathed diabetes wise which is really promising as well.  It's fair to say that December hasn't been as controlled as other months, but I feel like my understanding has been refreshed and that in itself means I can get through more difficult periods like Christmas without feeling like I'm spiralling out of control.

I've done pretty well to resist the various cakes, chocolates and biscuits that are laying around the house (to a certain degree at least).  I think my experiences with my diet and migraines over the last week or two is a bit of a factor in that as much as the diabetes, and, when all's said and done, I don't have the same appetite I used to have when I could eat plates of food without thinking.  I guess the diet and exercise has paid off quite a bit.

I had a bit of a difficult moment on Boxing Day when all the family went to my sister's house for lunch.  I'd just done my insulin injection (into my stomach as usual) when my daughter asked me what I was doing.  I told her that daddy had to do some medicine (which I've told her before).  But then she lifted her top up and started copying me saying "I do medicine".

I think I mentioned a while back when I was talking about my sponsorship and things about how I constantly have a worry that I've passed on my diabetes to her.  When she started mimicking my actions, it was quite difficult to take.  I'm now torn between doing my shot away from her so she can't see, or carry on as everything is "normal" - which of course it is for me.  I guess that's something I'll deal with over the next few weeks.

So - what has 2011 mean for me?  I've been thinking about some of the major things that have happened this year and while it's impossible to remember or mention everything, here are a few that have stood out for me:

• We finally moved house to be back closer to our family.  We sold pretty much a year ago and finally moved at the beginning of March
• Celebrated my daughter's first birthday (and now her second is on the horizon already), the old saying about how time flies never seems more true than when you're watching your kids grow up
• I had my first casino experience when I went to Las Vegas in September.  I've wanted to go for so long and it exceeded my expectations more than I thought possible
• I've made a lot of trips to see my beloved Sheffield Wednesday this season - one of the perks of being back home
• I've made a lot of new friends and contacts on Twitter which is really good
• I've got my physical condition back under control after a good three years of disregarding what I should be doing
• I've started running again after almost 4 years back when I thought it would never actually be possible again.  I know that sounds melodramatic but it's the honest truth

And now there's 2012 to look forward to:

•  My daughter's second birthday
• Running/walking/crawling round the London marathon course and hopefully making my magic £1,000 fundraising target
• A trip to the Olympics in London over the summer
• Hopefully a couple of long weekends away somewhere
• A friend's wedding in Poland on my birthday

And finally a few resolutions:

• Get good enough at photography to get one picture published somewhere
• Keep running and training for the Sheffield Half Marathon in 2013 (my nemesis)
• Do my best to focus on expanding my company 
• Stay involved with the community through sponsorship and donations
• Try and turn some online friendships into real life ones (if anyone online wants to of course)
• See at least 12 gigs (one a month seems a reasonable goal)
• Carry on my blog in some form or another after the marathon

I think that's about it for this year.  Thanks for all your support and kind words over the last 4 months or so. It's really encouraging and I hope I can do you all proud in April.  Remember, you can always donate to the cause on my fundraising page  if you'd like. Every single pound is most gratefully received and will do wonders for both charities. 

You can follow me on Twitter (@BroomOwl) or drop me an email (broomowl@gmail.com) if you fancy a chat.

Again, I hope you all have a great New Year's Eve, whatever you've got planned and I hope 2012 brings you joy and happiness.

Thanks for reading, take care

Andy