Filed under: extreme ironing, half marathon training, hastings half marathon, running
There is a serious point to all of this Hastings Half Marathon extreme ironing silliness: Team Steam is raising money for St Michael’s Hospice in Hastings, where Phil‘s Mum died last May. So here’s a little bit about the lady herself.
And she was a real lady.
Brenda was always well turned out, even if she was just pottering in the kitchen. There were always fresh flowers on the dining table. The house was absolutely immaculate. She loved pretty things, despite sharing a house with boys. She wrote letters and cards on a daily basis. And she had very traditional views. Sometimes we didn’t agree on those, come to think of it (but I think that’s part of a normal prospective daughter/mother-in-law relationship!)
I only knew Brenda for about four years, but it was only in the last few months that I really understood her. She showed enormous strength of spirit during her illness, coping admirably with the chemotherapy and radiotherapy that assaulted her little frame. We had a lovely time the Christmas before last, and shortly afterwards she was given the all-clear.
When I saw her a couple of months later, I was shocked at how much weight she’d lost. And yet, she hadn’t complained. In fact, I don’t remember her complaining once, even when the cancer reappeared in her spine. Not even when she started to lose feeling in her feet.
She must have been scared at that point. And yet, she drew immense strength from her Catholic faith, right until the end. That amazes me now.
It saddens me that she won’t be at our wedding later this year, or get to know our children if and when we are lucky enough to have them.
But much of her spirit lives on in Phil. She’d be so proud of him today, even if she only showed it with a little smile and that roll of the eyes that she used to do.
RIP Mrs Steam Senior
Filed under: extreme ironing, half marathon training, hastings half marathon, running | Tags: extreme ironing, hastings half marathon, running, St Michael's Hospice
Check out my guest blog post over on the Team Steam website…
Filed under: extreme ironing, half marathon training, hastings half marathon, running | Tags: extreme ironing, hastings half marathon, running, St Michael's Hospice
Here’s the husband-to-be (he’s still getting used to that moniker) talking about why we’re going to be running and extreme ironing the Hastings Half Marathon course in aid of St Michael’s Hospice in Hastings.
Filed under: extreme ironing, half marathon training, hastings half marathon, running | Tags: extreme ironing, extreme ironing bureau, Hastings, hastings half marathon, irunbecauseilovefood, running, St Michael's Hospice, team steam
For those of you with a memory for the bizarre, you might remember a short-lived craze of the early Noughties called “extreme ironing” - which was described as “an adrenaline sport that combined the thrill of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt”.
Stay with me here…
The basic premise was to take an iron and board outside, and iron a garment while participating in some kind of normal sport – people ironed on rock-faces, up mountains, underwater and even while base-jumping.
Quite quite odd.
Well, my husband-to-be was the man who invented it. (This was, you understand, well before my time.)
After setting up the Extreme Ironing Bureau, competing in the Extreme Ironing World Championships (bringing home Gold for Great Britain), writing a book on the subject, touring the United States for a month and allowing Rory McGrath to touch him up on They Think It’s All Over…he decided it actually was all over for him, and retired to the world of digital PR.
Extreme Ironing lived on, weirdly enough, and you probably remember the chap ironing merrily on the M1 last year as a case in point.
Well, my darling fiancé, Phil – AKA Steam – has decided to dust off the iron – and I seem to have been dragged along for the ride.
There is a reason for all this.
Last year Phil’s Mum, Brenda, lost her brutally short battle with cancer. She spent the last days of her life at St Michael’s Hospice in Hastings, where she died in peace with her family around her. The Hospice, like so many others, relies on donations for the vast majority of the £5m it requires every year to care for people like Brenda and their shellshocked families.
Team Steam will be running AND ironing the Hastings Half Marathon course in memory of Brenda.
If you’d like to find out more about the challenge, please visit Team Steam or go straight to our donation page.
In the meantime, here is one of our training videos for your amusement…
Over and out,
Mrs Steam
Filed under: hastings half marathon, running | Tags: British Military Fitness, cancer, gym, hastings half marathon, running, Ryan Giggs, St Michael's Hospice, yoga
My review of 2011 is going to be very short. A measly 33 blog posts and just one race under my belt says it all really, and I’m pretty sure those two stats are connected: a goal demands progress, and progress gives you something to write about.
I also gave up British Military Fitness in the summer. I just couldn’t make the timings work with my commute, and the Finsbury Park BMFers weren’t as nice and friendly as the Reading BMFers. I still miss those guys. 
Latterly, Phil and I have joined the local gym again for the winter. It’s worth negotiating on fees for anyone thinking of doing the same sort of thing. We paid upfront for six months and they bundled in the seventh month for free. It’s great for strength and conditioning work, so I’ve been trying to find the muscles that have been lying dormant since giving up BMF.
We’ve also bought the Ryan Giggs yoga-inspired video to do at home – see Phil’s review for his take on it. (Warning to the ladies: if you’re looking for whatever it was that made all those girls go potty for him, you won’t find it here. He’s about as charismatic as a wet lettuce.)
On the running front, I’m somewhat stuck in a four-miler rut. However, I will have to drag myself out of it pretty sharpish, as training for the Hastings Half Marathon begins in earnest now. Phil and I – accompanied by a few friends – will be running the (hilly) course in March in memory of Phil’s Mum, Brenda, who passed away in May this year after a brutally short battle with cancer. She spent her last days in the care of the wonderful staff at St Michael’s Hospice in Hastings, and we’ll be raising money for the hospice which relies so heavily on donations to keep caring for patients and their families. More to follow…
In the meantime, happy new year!
Filed under: British Military Fitness, cycling, Reading Half Marathon, running
It’s been a while, dear readers (in the unlikely event that there are any still around).
I left you in March, woefully underprepared for the Reading Half Marathon. Yet I made it round the familiar course though – in an almost respectable time of 2:06, a minute under my first half marathon time ten years ago, aged 24.
So I didn’t collapse or anything (but thank you to those who were concerned for my welfare). No, life has just been a bit busy of late. Phil and I looked at the calendar earlier this week and realised we’d been away from home for eight consecutive weekends – not all of them planned. Nor have we done a full week’s work in all that time, what with bank holidays, long weekends and various other things. Which has meant when we have been at work, we’ve been trying to squeeze five days’ work into four, three or even two days.
I’ve been doing a bit of Audiofuelled running, been back to British Military Fitness for the first couple of times since moving, and been out on the bike a lot – but just haven’t found the time to blog about it all. Perhaps you have to take a break from blogging sometimes in order to remember why you enjoy doing it in the first place. Bit like running really.
Filed under: food, half marathon training, Reading Half Marathon, running, skiing | Tags: half marathon training, how to train for a half marathon, Reading Half Marathon
- Get yourself a new job a few months before your scheduled half marathon.
- Start commuting on busy trains with Other People instead of driving yourself to work with no one else in the vicinity.
- Pick up several colds that hamper training, just as you should be ramping up the mileage.
- Attempt Janathon, but don’t worry about too much running, nooo nooo – try kickboxing, aerobics, spinning and weights.
- Go to Russia about five weeks before the race, and contract a stomach bug that wipes you out for nearly a week.
- Attempt a mid-length run on a good day (just under eight miles should do it) and convince yourself you’re going to cruise another five.
- Two weeks before the big event, embark on a ski trip to Austria. It’s only 357 days since you last strapped your feet into those instruments of torture they call ski boots, attached yourself to two planks and threw yourself down a mountain with gay abandon. Your knees, previously injured in skiing and running incidents, will be absolutely fine.
- While away, ensure you partake of all the regional specialities and carbo-loading opportunities – and I do mean massive breakfasts featuring bread, cheese and salami, sausage sandwiches for lunch (or sometimes just cake for lunch actually) the odd pint at the end of a hard day’s skiing, a five-course meal every night and half a bottle of wine.
- Upon your return from the ski trip (one week to go!!!) head out for a long run (actually 7.5 miles will be fine) and don’t worry a bit if your legs feel like leaden weights and your knees appear to have been replaced by those of an 85-year-old. You’re just worrying over nothing….
Such has been my training programme for the Reading half marathon this Sunday. Oh dear. Oh very dear.
Those sausage sandwiches (the Austrian "bosna") were good though...
Filed under: running, running gear | Tags: bra, running bra, running kit, Shock Absorber
Ladies, if you love your boobs and run – go out and buy one of these. You can read the tech spec over on the Shock Absorber website if you wish; but I can tell you that you don’t even know you have breasts when you’re running with one on. And if that isn’t a good bra, I don’t know what is.
Image courtesy of figleaves.com
Image from figleaves.com. Posed by a model - clearly.
Note: I haven’t been brainwashed by Shock Absorber, or even accepted any free kit from them (I wish) – I just think it’s a cracking bra that’s built for A-F cups. A lot of manufacturers don’t make high-impact bras for us girls with little lady bits!
Filed under: 5k, gym, half marathon training, Reading Half Marathon, running | Tags: 5k challenge, half marathon training, Reading Half Marathon, run, running
After a two-week period of very little exercise – I managed only a couple of gym sessions featuring the 5k challenge (I’m down to 26:47, which isn’t brilliant but is ok after being unwell) – it’s approaching decision-time on the Reading half marathon. I so desperately want to break two hours but with various bugs, cold weather and a holiday coming up, this might not be my year! Do I run it and accept it won’t be a PB and just try to enjoy it, or do I defer my place to next year and hope I’m better prepared?
Sean (Mr Audiofuel) and Angela reckoned I should give it a go anyway. Good to meet them both in the flesh for the first time on Tuesday evening, though the less said about the 8k run up and down the canal near Sean’s, the better, quite honestly. After one of those days at work that featured “lunch” at 4.30pm, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind for it! But Sean’s post-run pimped up pizza and a glass or two of wine more than made up for it. Thanks guys.
I followed up with a couple more gym sessions this week – one light one with my Mum on Friday encouraging how to use some new machines to help her recover after a knee op, and one heavier session featuring a good sweaty spin and some leg weights yesterday.
This morning, Phil and I tackled a longer run – 7.8 miles incorporating a little bit of off-road near where we live. Apart from puffing up the horrible hill which kicked in at about the six-mile point and a little twinge in my left knee which is becoming a regular thing, I felt reasonably good. Time was 1:15:31 which, if I could sustain it for 13 miles, would bring me in at around 2:04 or 2:05.
I’d feel happier with more than three more weeks to train, but I feel slightly more positive about it than I did a couple of weeks ago. Sooooo, I’m in…as long as I don’t fall over/get run over/keel over before then.
Filed under: 5k, food, gym, running | Tags: beef Stroganoff, Cafe Pushkin, Moscow, running, Russia, treadmill
I spent the first part of this week in Russia with work – Moscow this time for a summit with clients and their Russian agency. It’s a long way to go for a day-long meeting, and you seem to spend another two days getting there and back, but I’m awfully lucky to be able to say I’ve been.
On the second night, our colleagues had arranged a pub crawl with a difference, taking in the Metro, a seedy little bar full of men where the vodka arrived in tumblers, Red Square/Kremlin walls/Lenin’s mausoleum and a traditional cafe with local snackage to accompany more vodka. We ended up in a smart restaurant – the Cafe Pushkin – where I had beef Stroganoff. Proper Russian, me.
I confess I offloaded some of the vodka on my colleagues as I really struggle to drink neat spirits, and took it reasonably easy on the wine. I even bailed early so I could get some much-needed kip while some of the others ended up in a bar snorting sambuca. I felt very smug the next morning, and went to the hotel gym for a blast on the treadmill before pick-up.
(For the record – 5k challenge in 27:15, compared to 27:05 the previous Saturday in the UK).
Unfortunately, I have not been rewarded with good karma. Instead, I’ve been struck down with a horrible tummy bug. I made it into work yesterday, lasted an hour and gave up to come home to bed for the rest of the day. Today, I’ve worked, but haven’t left the house. Phil’s cooking curry and drinking beer, and I couldn’t be less interested in consuming either, let alone in getting up off the sofa.
I deduce from this two things:
1) next time, I might as well stay out.
2) this half-marathon training really isn’t going too well.
