Thursday 23rd Feb
Distance: approx 1mile (give or take)
Time: 19:08
Avg Speed: approx 3.46mph
Avg Pace: approx. 14:25min/mile
Calories Burned approx. 150
One of my 4 out of 5s today! You know the type …body didn’t want to work and brain not very responsive. I knew before I set off that I was not in a good frame of mind, nevertheless I set off with a new route in mind. I didn’t want to do my Saturday morning route as I feel that if I was to venture that particular way on a day when I feel less than committed it would negate all the good work I have managed to do on that route. So I decided to cross the Headingley lane and cut up North Grange Road and head towards the Ridge but then come back along Wood Lane and back round a circular track along the Headingley Lane to home. Unfortunately I did not record half of the distance as my ‘Endomondo’ app recorded the time in full but the GPS didn’t kick in till about half way through so my stats for today are estimated.
On days like today when the effort weighs heavily and the mind-set is less than 100% I really have to remind myself why I am doing this. As I said in my first blog ‘My Raison d’etre’ I have registered for the Great North Run; which I now learn is one of the harder half marathons, should have looked for a jog in Norfolk or on the Lincolnshire plains but oh no I have to go and sign up for the uphill saunter that is the GNR! Never the less registered I am and committed to 13.5 miles of dragging my sorry ass around the glorious NE of England one week before my 51st birthday. One could think that I am having some kind of menopausal, mid-life, bucket list type epiphany and that my road to Damascus is to be found up the Headingley Lane but no, nothing so self-driven. As I said in my first entry to the great blogsphere I am doing this to raise funds for the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign.
MD is a cruel disease that afflicts my beloved, for him it is a slow progressive degeneration of the muscles in his legs. He is slowly being robbed of the ability to walk and although to all intents and purposes he looks healthy and still manages to maintain a relatively normal lifestyle he does have great difficulty walking and can fall at any given moment without warning or reason. He has adapted to this very well and has developed a nifty way of rolling as although he cannot prevent the fall once it begins, he does tend to do it in slow motion thus allowing him to deploy his tried and tested fall/roll/catch system.
The MD campaign are a small charity but charged with a huge task as there are over 40 different types of the disease. Muscular dystrophy is a group of inherited disorders that involve muscle weakness and loss of muscle tissue, which get worse over time and as with all inherited conditions, they are passed down through families. They may occur in childhood or adulthood. There are many different types of muscular dystrophy. They include:
·
Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy
·
Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy
·
Myotonic dystrophy
The type that we
are dealing personally with is Becker
muscular dystrophy and although it is an inherited condition in most cases,
ours is not. The doctors say that my Raison d’etre has a mutated gene that has
caused the condition. So I often refer to him as my middle-aged mutant ninja. I
laugh at him a lot but I don’t ever make light of his condition as I know that
because of it our future together may be limited. It will certainly be
restricted, but you see folks, I adore the man so if I have to carry him on my
back I will but for now I will just get up put on my trainers and go for runs -
when I don’t want to, when it hurts, when the dammed GPS doesn’t work - because
I can as my legs work and although they are old and short and reluctant they
are still in working order.
So if you are
finding my rambling compositions in any way entertaining please have a look at www.muscular-dystophy.org and see why I am doing this. If
you feel you want to support me then you can log onto my just giving account
and make a donation www.justgiving.com/Team-LewisMDC.
Whether you do or don’t that is ok, I
will keep the training up. I will keep recording my efforts here. I will turn
out to the run and I will always keep the reason for my efforts at the fore
forefront of my mind. Like I said before love makes you do stupid things. J
See you at the
weekend blogsphere! xx
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