Cheers Michele

sounds like your little man took his punishment well , good job its always worse when they have ago about not being allowed out and so on , My niece(8) is the type to walk out the door saying what did you say again mum im grounded and then carry on walking lol she's a very difiant little missus , but if i remember rightly my sister was exactly the same so that proberly where she gets it from.

Good luck for the week ahead.

Teresa

Hello hello hello!

I've survived the 'rents! They both bought their wedding outfits on Friday, then on Saturday we drove down to the Barbican and found their hotel and all that sort of stuff. On Sunday I ran that Run London 10K in Hyde Park. I ran all the way And I did it in an hour and 11 mins, which is fine by me! What's more is I felt like keeping going, so Amsterdam should be a breeze

I'm not talking about what I ate over the weekend It was tasty though!

I've just had my programme done at the gym this morning - there's LOADS of cool stuff there, like bouncing around on stability balls and using the pulley machine for stuff.

Back to normality

I just put a huge amount of washing out to dry and its suddenly started tiddling down!

Never mind.... at least I had a lovely 3 hour walk in the dawn sunshine this morning.

Well, this is day one of my re-start and its going fine so far. I had porridge with cinnamon in it for brekkie BEFORE my walk - which meant I had far more energy and walked much further than I have been able to since, for some reason (probably to do with Body for Life) I started exercising before brekkie.

Yum - I'm eating my mid-morning fruit snack - I've got a small dish of frozen blueberries which I'm eating one at a time - they are like little blueberry icepoles - the only problem is my fingers and the keyboard have gone all purple.

I was reading the Sin and Slim diet website. www dot followed by slimandsin dot com There was a little article about it in a magazine and it basically sounds like a good idea. Has anyone else heard of this or tried it out? They've got some nice (and easy) recipes there.

Moo - what a great bargain!

Sarah Ann- You must like Kohlrabi - I hate it!

2Frus and Yp! - you put me to shame! I don't think I could run anywhere if my life depended on it. I have to start walking more - I am getting puffed out.

I love kohlrabi - I like all veg except hot beetroot.

Sarah ann : I remember sin & slim as some celebrity was doing it and they were on this morning , i think it might have been Nancy Sorall after she had her twins but not too sure , she said it was really good and she was losing weight steadly on it , and i thought it sounded good too when i checked it out on the net but i decided to go with Rosemary instead.

take care and have a good day all.

Teresa

Well done on your 10K Frus

I don't trust diets promoted by celebs they are normally (always) being paid.

Are you signing up to S&S Sarah?

I hope you guys don't mind the random obnoxious American busting in here!!!!

I'm off to run the 10k this afternoon, I opted not to buy new sneakers so my feet are sure to be sore later. It's going to be pretty warm today so not sure how well I will do, last year I did it in an hour 10 but that was in the cool pouring rain, we'll see today.

My friends will be at the finish line and then we will park ourselves in a pub for lunch, but no drinking for me, I'm on the wagon thru next weekend but I may amend that since I just heard about a pub craw on Saturday. I'm pathetically weak

Good luck with the 10k - and well done Frus on yours.

I did 3.7 miles this morning, but my legs seemed a bit heavy so I might take it a bit easy til Sunday. I'll see how I feel tomorrow morning and whether I feel like a run then.

Tapering question for Helen....

Should I? And how much? Or do I just lay off the running? (which is easy since I only run on Sundays anyway! ) I've been to the gym today, and planning to go Tues, Weds and Thurs just weight training, and I'm teaching tonight, then training Tues and possibly Thurs. It's this Thursday session I'm more worried about since it's 2 hours long and 3 days before the half. How much did you taper for your first half? I'm inclined to think that activities the day before will be more important to performance as I think there is enough time to recover from Thursday (especially if I take it easy). What do you think?

Probably not although its not too bad a price compared to some. I was just hoping someone might have tried it and could let us know what makes it different from the average low fat / low cal / low GI diet. Probably nothing because, TBH, after 31 years of yoyo dieting I really do finally believe that there really is no magic lotion, potion or formula thats going to make me a size 10 any time soon without me half killing myself.

I thin S&S is just low fat / low cal - I read the sample plan (which is at the very bottom of the blurb on the Health or Fitness Professionals tab) - looks to me that the major difference is that they say that three days a week you have a fruit brekkie and three other days a week you eat a fruit lunch - which probably releases up the calories necessary for the chosen sin items. Its nice to be told that its not my fault that I'm fat, though!

Send round the doughnuts.

LOL - if they were aiming at high level celebrity endorsement to advertise it then perhaps they should have chosen someone a little more well known than Nancy Sorrell - I've never heard of her before. I mean... Vic Reeves isn't exactly an A list celeb any more, is he?

I've never heard of her either! And I only know Vic Reeves since my uncle went to school with him

I just did the S&S questionnaire sin choice thingy (didn't pay at the end though) - it told me that I don't want to sin enough and kept trying to push me in to eating/drinking more 'sinful' stuff. My daily sins were fairly okay but apparently I don't sin enough on a weekly basis. Hmmmm!

Frus, I would definitely taper at least a bit, you want to make sure that you're full of energy on Sunday and not still recovering from a hard effort too close to the day. You should aim to be fresher than you usually are for Sunday runs, not just because you'll be running further than before (I assume you haven't done 13.1 before - I didn't before my first half) but because you'll also probably find yourself running a bit faster than normal on the day.

You need to look at intensity as much as quantity - marathon programmes often recommend a 2 mile jog the day before the race, but not a 2 mile flat out session. It's OK to keep active, but don't do any hard sessions too close to the day. You don't want to push yourself too hard, but you also want to do enough to keep yourself moving. I tend to do my running towards the beginning of the week and then wind down with lower intensity stuff like swimming towards the weekend, with a complete rest (other than sightseeing!) on Saturday.

I taper at least a bit for pretty much everything, but for the shorter races that really just means taking a couple of days off close to the day rather than a full on three week marathon taper.

What you do on Thursday really depends how tired it usually makes you. I'd be wary of doing weights AND kickboxing on Thursday, but you'll probably have enough time to recover from one or the other if you don't do anything much on Friday or Saturday. Maybe see if you can make Thursday a slightly less hard session than usual.

Weight training isn't such an issue, it's cardio you need to be more careful with, although I tend to avoid any weight training that will make my muscles hurt for too long afterwards. Not because it drains too much energy, just because I find it more painful to run if my muscles are still recovering. Maybe do something each day you have weights planned, but don't push it too much and save the really hard sessions for next week.

Eating is important too. You don't need to do anything too special food wise until Friday, and probably don't need any more calories, but try to get more of your calories from good carbs and protein and try to eat slightly less fat. (As an aside, when I say no more calories I mean no more than maintenance level, I wouldn't be trying to lose this week. I've only really done halves/marathons since I stopped losing weight properly, so for me it's not much of an increase. For someone eating at a calorie deficit level, maybe you would need more.) On Friday and Saturday, eating a bit more can be a good idea to make sure that your energy reserves are nicely topped up, but don't force yourself to eat too much as feeling bloated and carrying extra weight (particularly water!) won't help either.

To be honest, it depends what your aims and priorities are. You will run better if you taper, but you'll probably still be able to run adequately if you don't. You'll get round either way, but the fresher you are the more comfortable it is likely to be. If kickboxing is the priority and Amsterdam is just something you want to say you've done, no matter how slow then by all means do as much kickboxing as you want. If this is the priority for the week then maybe some other things have to give. Running is almost always my priority, so I taper, but I appreciate that might not be the same for everyone!

An essay on tapering, apologies to anyone not running a half this weekend!