Tuesday 15 May 2012

The Leeds Half Marathon

After years of a sedentary lifestyle, I took up running last January when we moved very close to Roundhay Park in Leeds - if living opposite one of the largest public parks in Europe didn't inspire me to get my bum into gear then I decided that I would be a lost cause in the exercise stakes! I'll be honest my first 'run' was really embarrassing - my friend Paul joined me and when I say I couldn't go for 5 minutes without gasping for air it's not an exaggeration; in fact it had to be abandoned after a just 15 minutes!! - pathetic.

But I kept it up for some reason. My first organised run was the Leeds 10k last May which I never thought I would get round in one piece! Looking back now that seems a little silly but it felt like a real achievement and my time of 46 minutes wasn't too shabby considering.  Next was the Hoylake 10k (fast and flat), the Bradford Half Marathon (nails - 1hr 45m 50s), the Stockport 10 miles (too far away - 1hr 17m 05s), the Liversedge Half Marathon (nails - 1hr 40m 50s) then a run called the Spen 20 miles which in March (super nails! - 2h 50m). Looking back I have actually achieved quite a lot considering the terrible start to my running career in January 2011!

So this leads me to last weekend with the Leeds Half Marathon on Sunday. The night before a run, my dinner has been a carb-tastic pizza and this continued on Saturday night. Ever the dutiful wife-to-be, Jo made a pizza dough in the afternoon which was then topped with spicy pork, chorizo, spinich and mushrooms - delicious huh!

But after a couple of minutes cooking, the oven stopped working! Jo managed to use the residual heat to cook the pizza as much as possible but it was touch as go as to if it was edible or not. Although it was pretty doughy (some may say undercooked!) we decided it was okay and demolished it all but Jo was pretty dissapointed that it wasn't as she hoped. To be honest my tummy was a little delicate on Sunday morning......

The half marathon went quite well with a time of 1hr 40m 9s and it was a good training run with the Edinburgh Marathon looming at the end of the month!
The pizza minus two pieces
My running number
My finishing time
My medal!

1 comment:

Simona said...

Congratulations! Very nice time I would say! I loved this event, but mainly because Leeds Half-Marathon'12 was my first race ever :) Good luck in Edinburgh!