Marathon Woman!

I’m sorry it’s been a couple of weeks, I’ve been up to all sorts, like the Flora Women’s Mini Marathon, which trust me, was an experience. I never thought I would see myself doing a Marathon, let alone a Mini Marathon which was just 10k, but it wasn’t so bad. I chose the Irish Guide Dogs as my charity, for their Autism Assistance Dog Programme. My best friend has an Autistic son and my father in law is a photographer for the ‘Faces of Autism’ event so I am familiar with the programme. In my heart, I was doing it for my friends son Jett.

I registered in February, I normally walked 11k every second day anyway so it wasn’t going to be a challenge, but I decided I was going to walk faster than I have ever walked in my life.  I didn’t really follow the eating plan as I’m not an athlete (I enjoy horse riding though!) so I didn’t see the point in the whole protein, muscle building thing. I set up an account on a fundraising website which links to charities and they claim the money themselves, no middle person (me) and there is no limit or minimum on what you can pledge. See below on how you can still sponsor me!

For a couple of days before, I drank about 3 litres of water a day and took lots of supplements like fish oil’s and multi-vitamins to prepare my body for the battering and the morning of June 2nd,  I got up, had my Wheatabix and was ready for anything. I was supposed to meet with friends who were also doing the event but decided to do it alone, no distractions, tunnel vision to that finish line.

I finally found a photo that I’m in, of all the 44,000 women doing it, I managed to find myself!!

The pain afterwards was not funny, I power walked the whole way, I’m not a jogger or runner, but if I can lose enough weight by next year, I”ll run or jog.  I walked about 16k that day between getting to the train station and walking to the event start point. I couldn’t move my legs, from my hips, inner thighs to my knee’s..my feet were fine! I lay on the sofa like an invalid, my husband was in England that week with work so I took advantage, watched Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa on Food Network and all the chick flick’s I could. It hasn’t turned me off doing it next year, one bit!

If you enjoy my blog, support Autism awareness and would still like to sponsor my walk-even though it was two weeks ago, you still can on this website charity.ie. it goes directly to the charity, not me and you’ll be helping a really great cause!