Welcome to March. Hurrah for Fresh Starts.

You may have noticed that I love fresh starts. Let’s think about this one and this one and this one and this one. Don’t worry, I am under no illusions about my tenacity and self-control. Hopefully my general enthusiasm makes up for the lack of the former two. My intentions are always so good but my reality rarely lives up to them.

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t feel like a runner at the moment. My February mileage topped out at 73 which is better than January but is frankly rubbish. I am still carrying round 5 extra British pounds (weight, not currency) and they are all snuggled round my belly. I feel flabby and I look it too. And that feeling of flabbiness is getting me down. Between travelling and shin injury in February, I ran little and poorly. You may have noticed I’d blogged a little less (which isn’t a bad thing). That was because I felt so UN-like a runner. I feel a little like a fraud.

Hey, let’s reward a hill-run with an enormous fry-up!

But March is my latest Fresh Start and I’m excited about it. A few things are changing.

Firstly…the Husband is going away on Sunday for two weeks which is harsh as I’ve only just got him back. This will make running harder to organise around my Dude, who isn’t madly keen on early morning runs no matter how generous he is. But it does make my evenings considerably less likely to involve watching ‘Homeland‘ and hanging out on the sofa with my favourite tall Englishman. So I have resolved to either run, do Yoga on Demand or do a Jillian Michaels workout every day that he is away. I have a training plan (written on the back of an envelope) and I aim to run 120 miles in March.

Yay, I used to be a runner!

Secondly…and this is DESPERATELY exciting for me…my Dude starts Preschool on Tuesday. He and I are thrilled beyond words. This gives me two mornings a week without him. One of them is already committed but Tuesday mornings are going to be dedicated to longer runs! I am SO excited about this. His preschool is a few miles away and in a part of my area I don’t know so well, so new roads are opening up to me.

How I feel about six hours a week to myself all of a sudden!

Thirdly…I am going to lose that flipping weight. I am going to be 4lbs lighter when he gets home and I will lose another 2lbs by the end of the month. Back to my happy weight, please. I have to be honest, I did expect the weight to drop off when I gave up meat a few weeks ago. It hasn’t. Hmmm. I recognise that I need to work at it.

This is what Happy feels like! I want it again please.

I’m running the Oakland Half Marathon on the 23rd. I am under no illusion that I will PR. I think I would struggle enormously to go sub-two at the moment. But I want to do the work and put in a decent effort. My shin is much better now so I can start upping my game.

You’ve heard this all before…I even linked to where I’ve said it before to help you roll your eyes more easily. But I need to do this. I was reading the blogs of local runners this weekend, it seemed like everyone ran Lake Chabot or some trails or did something amazing. I am longing to do something amazing again! I want to be a proper runner again!