The Habulous Blog result fundraising

Only 4 days and 4 nights to go and then I will be running the London Marathon, Yes me that slightly overweight lady who likes her gin and prosecco a little too much, oh and did I mention chocolate..... . I apologise in advance to anyone who sees me running or limping along on Sunday, my running face is apparently an unhappy grimace (I do enjoy it, honest), my face muscles just don’t behave the way I want them to when I’m focussed on keeping my legs turning over.  Have you ever seen those silly YouTube clips “What I think I look like when I run” Verse “ What I actually look like when I run”, well imagine that and you’ll easily be able to pick me out in the crowds.

I started this blog nearly 5 months ago to share my training adventures and boy have there been adventures and lots and lots of hard work.  Surprisingly though, I have really quite enjoyed writing up my weeks for you to read, so if you can all cope I’ll try and keep it up.  You are all probably keen to hear the update on my torn soleus (calf muscle for those of you reading for the first time)!  After a visit to the sports Physio this week  I was cleared to try to start running again; just one mile yesterday, two today and three tomorrow.  Now he offered no reassurances that my soleus will stay intact, but he was hopeful and so am I. 

Tomorrow morning I’m heading up to London to enjoy a few days rest before the big day.  I must admit to feeling a little strange, a similar feeling to waiting for your exam results, excitement and apprehension rolled into one.  Before my mishap I was aiming to finish just under the 5 hour mark now I’d be really chuffed with 5 and a half hours, sort of like I’d have really liked to have achieved A’s in my GCSE’s, but that was before I realised that I would have to do lots and lots of revision, so I was quite happy with getting C’s (not that I’d tell me kids that).

I hope all of you with kids to occupy during half term have survived the trials of having them home all the time.  Hopefully you had some fun too.  My two have reached the stage of constant battle, telling tales on one another at every given opportunity. At times I felt like my head would explode, I really want to lie on the floor and throw a toddler tantrum (like that advert with the lady in the super market many years ago).

I was working in my Tavistock store today and got a lovely surprise when I arrived; my team had decorated the store window just for me.  I’ve got to say this really made me smile and even bought a tear to my eye.  It means such a lot as for the last 13 years I’ve always done the window displays so to approach the shop and see balloons etc was amazing, I’m smiling just writing about it.

Well on Sunday I get to tick the London Marathon off my bucket list, last year it was Venice that got a tick, no comparison really but I actually can’t wait.  Massive thanks to every one of you who has supported me, in terms of sponsoring, wishing me luck and especially to those who have put up with my moaning (sorry). 

Right now, I’m feeling refreshed after two nights away with my hubby Paul and no children (that’s right no kids......  we bribed my Mum into having them for the whole weekend).  Over the course of the weekend I was struck by what it meant to be kid free, here’s just a few of the highlights:

• No constant background bickering
• No standing on the sidelines of a football pitch, trying to keep upright while the wind comes straight for you at 50 mph
• No need to spend 8 hours in a hall watching table tennis and worrying about how big my bottom is becoming and what I could be doing if I wasn’t there.
• TV remote freedom (goodbye Harry Hill, I do not have to watch you this weekend, in fact better still no TV)
• Travelling in the car without a single “Are we there yet”
• Eating with no one moaning about the vegetables on the plate.
• Not being compared to all those allusive (they are never named, in fact may not exist) parents who let their children do exactly what they want, when they want.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point; don’t get me wrong I love them to bits but a break from their demands once in a while is a real pleasure.  Needless to say we had a really relaxing time; it’s not often that we have no real agenda.  We walked, we ate and we slept, absolute bliss.

The weekend was near perfect, I can highly recommend “The Lugger Hotel” at Portloe.  It is rare that everything goes just the way you want and for the most part it did.  Sure enough though it was the start of getting back to reality on the last night, when the waitress knocked a freshly filled glass of red wine all over me.  Amongst the commotion we became the focus of every single person in the restaurant, as they watched to see how events would un-fold, looking down at the state of my dress we decided a quick exit was the only course of action we could take.  Back to the safety of our room we retired early to dream about our missed puds.

The weekend away came at the perfect time, as we have been really busy the last few months, literally working around the clock trying to get our latest project up and running.  Paul and I have now been running our stores for 13 years and over the last few years we have worked with lots of talented designer makers to bring more handmade elements to our stores.  We have also launched our own handmade ranges; Paul makes some amazing wooden letters and I make a small range of hand thrown pottery and of course our very successful fragranced soya wax melts.

Both of us have a real passion for art and design and are currently working towards launching our own range of cards (at last we are putting our Art School days to full use!)  Here’s one of our designs, it really is great to get our teeth into a project like this.

I am finding the London Marathon training really tough now, I didn’t really realise how much of a time commitment it would be.  This time of the year the weather can be pretty rough and my last 3 long runs have all involved hail (it hurts a lot).  As soon as I finish this post I’m going to have to change into my trainers and do a mere 20 mile run.  I spent last night planning the run and for those who know the area this is what I have planned.  Running from my house to the Burrator reservoir, to complete 3 circuits, then on to Meavy and using the back lanes run to Yelverton, from there I will join the cycle path and run into Tavistock.  I say run I’ll probably be dragging my feet at the end.  If you see me yell something encouraging, I need all the support I can get.  Bloody typical the heavy rain has just started.   A lovely surprise when I crawl back in through the front door later, would be to be a little bit closer to my fund raising target, so if you can please give generously!  Here’s the link to my fundraising page.  Bye for now.

After what feels like weeks of rain, I opened the curtains to sun, immediately my mood lightened and the thought of today’s training run changed from dread to excitement.  I love being outdoors especially when its dry and you can feel the sun heating your skin.  I’m feeling very lucky that I also have a walk planned with friends later today. 

We have had lots of fun in the shops in the last few weeks as we have received loads of new stock from my trade show orders earlier in the year.  It’s a great feeling when we get new ranges in, 13 years into running shops I still feel like a young child opening a present when new things arrive.  I’m super pleased with my finds this year, we are now stocking a new range of jewellery, that is absolutely beautiful, we also have a range of ceramics by an artist called Jimbobart whom I have made personal purchases from in the past.  His work is so clever featuring caricatures of animals with great slogans.  We have a total of 4 of his plates on our wall and they are supposed to represent each one of my family members.  I’ll let you guess whose is whose!?!

Training for the marathon is so much harder than I expected.  The commitment is at times totally overpowering both physically and mentally.   I’ve got a busy life anyway and I really have been finding it hard to squeeze my training in.  This week I managed 16 miles and believe it or not I ran the whole way, I didn’t walk once, not once (although I did have a very brief pause for a wild wee!)

I find myself focussing on fractions on my long runs. So the conversation in my strange mind goes a little like this; Great 1/16 of the way only 1/15 to go, 2/8 of the way this is easy....  you can do it.....  You’ve only got to run this another 5.5 times.... OMG 5.5 more times, what am I doing, why, it will be worth it in the long run, stupid girl thinking this would be easy.  Oh look there’s a walker, say hello and smile.  Your nearly  ¼ of the way now,  come one keep focused, gosh your ½ way you’ve got this, keep on going.  Think of your form (bugger that just run) and the second half in reverse, I won’t bore you with more fractions.  Then I reach the last mile and if I have any energy left I think I might just smile.  

Before I confirmed my charity place with Back Care, I needed to know more about the charity, so I phoned to ask my list of questions, I’m one of those people who have to be passionate about something to give it my all.  I was super pleased to get a call back from Brian Hammond the charities Chairman.  It’s always a good sign when someone takes time out to explain things.  From speaking with Brian I learnt that the charities core focus is on education and fact sheets to help prevent back pain/problems.  Over the years they have ploughed lots of funding into research and have had a positive impact on treatments.  They have a help line and have when funding has allowed, paid for individuals who could not access treatment to get help.  What really amazed me is how reliant they are on the funds raised by their small team of London Marathon runners, without us Brian does not think they would be able to continue their work.  So by supporting me you are helping this great small charity continue their amazing work. Sponsor link just click here

At this very moment in time I ache like bloody mad, my legs and my butt in particular.  I definitely feel as if I have overestimated my ability to run a marathon, I won’t give up but I am getting worried.  I’ve not long come back from my long run for this week,  a mere 14 miles, I say mere lightly, it’s a massive achievement for me and one I would be really happy with, if it wasn’t for the pressure of training for London.  I need to run an additional 12.2 miles on the day, which right now I really can’t imagine doing. 

Today’s run was the furthest I have EVER ran and I must add if it wasn’t for my commitment to the marathon it would be the most I’ll ever do.  I’m not good at repetition so today I ran a new route,  the cycle route from Yelverton to Plymouth, this meant that until the half way mark I was running a gentle downhill slope, so when I turned around all I could think was “Bugger” I should have thought that one through a bit more before setting off.

When I finished the run I had to nip to the local shops for a few essentials, I got out the car and started to sway on my feet, as if I’d just left the pub after way to many units of alcohol, I did a quick recky to make sure no one had noticed and then hobbled around the shops before heading home, where I planned to jump into a steamy hot bath.  As soon as I walked through the door the doorbell went and I had the sinking realization that I had a meeting with a rep to place some orders for the stores.  Oh well life goes on, a little stiffer than normal.

Last week was half term for my kids and my eldest was off skiing.  I was so pleased for him (even though I will admit to being very jealous).  It was certainly strange for the rest of us, who had to carry on as normal, knowing one of our clan was having the time of their life.  The week was spent juggling work with occupying FFion our youngest.  I’ve got to say I’m glad they are back at school today and the juggling can stop, anyone else feeling the same way?

So this week its back to normal ish, we have an exciting new project on the go, which I’ll share with you all soon.  In the meantime I’m really looking forwards to getting some time on my pottery wheel, as I have been working on some new decoration styles that have worked really well on the testers and I want to get more done as soon as I can.  So I’ll leave you with a photo of my new jugs and a link to my fundraising page!

I feel like my feet haven’t touched the ground since my last blog post, I have been a very busy bunny.   Marathon training, another tradeshow, pot throwing, lots of visual merchandising in the stores, training a new team member, lino cutting and of course the dreaded admin (I really couldn’t ignore the pile on my desk any longer, I’m hoping to see the wood again by the end of next week!)

The days don’t seem to have enough hours to get everything done, I have noticed that day light  appears to be lasting longer at last, I think it was nearly 6pm when darkness over took last night, Yippee, I for one am so much happier with more daylight in my life.  Things are so much easier when we have longer days; it seems there is more time to do all those things we need to do on top of work.

Last week I returned to my lino cutting classes, something I am particularly enjoying.  I love the way lino print challenges the way in which I tackle an image; you have to think in terms of colour blocks rather than gradients. I had been working on a drawing of my local town over the Christmas period.  This image is going to form my first reduction lino print (I’ve heard this method appropriately called suicide lino, if you make a mistake there is no going back).  I’ll try to explain further, Lino printing is a form of printmaking, where the printing plate is cut into lino. Yes your right, lino as in linoleum, the stuff that also is used for floor covering. Once cut, a piece of paper is placed over it, and then run through a printing press or pressure applied by hand to transfer the ink to the paper. The result is a linocut print.  For a reduction print run, used when working with more than one colour, after the first colour print, normally the lightest colour the lino is then cut into again, re-inked, first print paper re-applied and then ran through the press again, are you still with me?  I hope so.  Anyway at my first session I managed to get 20 prints of my first colour done, I was literally running to complete the job.  Here’s a picture of my first colour, I’m hoping to complete the rest of the cutting before returning next week, so my next blog may well include images of the final piece.  Fingers crossed it works. 

The weekend was spent in Birmingham at Spring Fair a massive tradeshow which uses up all 20 halls at the NEC; I had an exhausting two days walking all the halls, in search of new product lines for the stores.  I love seeing the ways in which the exhibitors put their stands together, trying to entice us buyers to part with our budgets, this year I can safely say the cactus is a big thing, the bigger the better!

Somehow I did manage my long training run on Tuesday morning. I had to persuade Paul my hubby to drop me 11 miles from the house, I didn’t want to have the option of shortening my run and this way I had to get home.  It was literally the middle of nowhere, the end of a road somewhere in Dartmoor. The run was a pretty pleasant one, crisp with bright sunshine.  As I neared my home the heavens opened and throw  what felt like heavy pins down on me, hail, my god its evil stuff and when clad in lycra it hurts that little bit more.  The end result was a good one though I did manage to run the last mile in just over 8 minutes and 30 seconds quite an improvement on my 10 to 11 minute miles; motivation really does come in lots of different ways!

I had a lovely surprise sponsor this week too; the chairman of Back Care has sponsored me which has really touched my heart. It wasn’t something I thought they would do so a big thank you to Back Care and the rest of you lovely lot that have done the same, if you haven’t and would like to support me here’s the link. Please don’t forget to let me know you’ve read the blog, a comment or like would be great. More rambling soon, bye for now.