"I promise to do my best"
I first made this promise when I was 5 and joining Rainbows. I can't remember it if I'm honest but I do still have the certificate somewhere. It features in all the promises for every section of Girlguiding and it's particularly important to me because my late Guide leader who was one of the most fantastic and inspirational women I've ever known always used to tell us "If you know you've done your best, nobody can ever ask any more of you" and something I tell each one of my Brownies at their own promise ceremonies.
So as the reality of what lies ahead has rapidly dawned on me since Christmas, that's what I'm going to try and keep in my head, doing my best.
Since I found out about getting my London Marathon place back in October, I've kept feeling a mixture of nerves and excitement. But since we've tipped over into 2018 and after a few weeks of seriously slacking off running while eating and drinking all the wrong things, I'm feeling more than a little bit apprehensive about it all.
Being quite a practical person who works well when I can see in front of me what I need to do, late last week I set about sorting myself a training plan. It's only very vague and it's mainly so I can see how much my Sunday run needs to increased by each week to get those all important miles in. So that's made me feel a little bit better... I do like a plan.
However, due to the drop in mileage since autumn 2017, I've got a bloody lot of work to do to get me to where I need to be. I've found in the past with runs that I've done that writing a plan is the easy bit, sticking to it is where it becomes tricky... Especially if an invitation involving some weekend drinking is thrown my way!
I've come to the realisation that I need to be as strong-willed out of my running gear as I am when I'm in it, and if I need to turn down a night out here and there it will do me the world of good come April 22nd.
In terms of the running itself, I've got to get tougher on myself on the cold, dark, rainy and snowy winter mornings/afternoons/evening when I really don't want to get my trainers on and go. Although since my last blog post my life has changed massively in that I now have the most supportive running partner (and partner in everything!) who I know will be invaluable over the next few months and who'll be there every step of the way and I can't thank him enough for that.
So today was week 1 run 1. It was alright, nothing particularly exciting but it's four miles under the belt and it was a decent pace. Here we go!!
So I can't really round off my posts now without a shameless plug to my fundraising page, the donations and your support really will help me both in motivation and meeting my target.
www.virginmoneygiving.com/kayknowles
Thanks for reading!
