Should I be proud or embarassed?

Inspired by a link on my friend's blog I did the nerdtest. He only got 99%, probably because he did an accountancy degree...

preparación para mi clase

Ahora, describo la ciudad de Granada.

Granada es en la provincia de Andalucia, a lado de las sierras nevadas. La clima es bonita. En invierno las temperatures son frios pero en verano las temeratures hay calor, treintaytres grados. El símbolo de la ciudad es la granada, la fruta llamó 'pomegranate' en la lengua inglesa.

Granada es una ciudad muy bonita y antigua. Tiene la famosa Alhambra. En el siglo catorce el rey moro 'Mohammed quinto' construyó la alhambra, un palacio y fortaleza. Alhambra es muy bonita, hay jardines y fuentes pero es muy apretado con los turistas. En en siglo quince los reyes católicos conquistaron los moros, y todo la gente convirtió a la religion católica o fue a otros países. Muchos de los edificios moros fueron destruidos, pero un famoso edificio 'el Bañuelo' o 'los baños árabes' sobrevivieron.

Granada es menos grande que Madrid, pero es más bonita y simpática. Me gusta mucho comer en las churrerías, como los churros y chocolate, uno desayuno tradicional.

Martes. Día dos, semana cuatro

Sábado mi marido y yo corramos, por 6 km. Pero, ahora tengo dos ampollas y un otro herida porque mi brasier rozó.

Sábado:
Distancia: 6 km
Ruta: A lado del río Mersey
Tiempo : 48min


Mañana por la mañana correré. Una ruta pequeña, con curitas para mi heridas.
No tengo tiempo libre. Tengo trabajo muy complicado, y estudiando español no es fácil.

Jueves. Día cuatro, semana tres

Miércoles monté a caballo, se llama Lizzie. Lizzie es muy alta y guapa, pero no es muy melosilla. Intentó morder a mi mano.

En tres semanas, mi madre y yo vamos a viajar a 'Lake District' para dos días. Iremos a la playa y un escuela equestrian. Mi madre es más hábil con caballos como yo.

Dos pájaros con una piedra

Yo estudiaba español para 18 meses, pero no lo hablo bien. En el futuro, escribiré mi blog en español para practicar.
Sabado:
Distancia: 5.77km
Ruta: Por Decathlon
Tiempo: 49.55. Pero paré para comprar bolsitas de té.

Lunes:
Distancia: 3km
Ruta: gimnasio
Tiempo: 30.
No me gusta correr en el gimnasio porque el aire tiene calor y tiene sabor segunda mano.

¡Tengo una ampolla! Mañana y Miércoles no voy a correr. Necesito descansar.

Day 2, Week 2

Very bad run yesterday - I couldn't find my heart rate monitor so felt all out of control during the run, and the cold air really made me struggle. At least I got out and ran though (I guess) even if it was only 3.5K.

I've decided to change riding schools - my old one was getting really greedy on the costs and the lessons weren't teaching me anything. I've found somewhere that can do me lunchtime private lessons for £14. Fantastic! I was spending that for a group lesson with 3 other people.

Day 7, Week 1

Gaaaah! Now I've got cold. Busiest week at work for ages coming up and I'm all sniffly and coughy today. Growl.

I'm going horseriding this afternoon so hopefully some fresh air will do me good.

Day 4, Week one

A feeble attempt at going to the gym today. I must have been asleep when I packed my gym back as I had put in my superwarm long sleeved top, the wrong running tights and odd socks.

I did about 20 minutes on the treadmill (1.5 miles) and 20 minutes on the cross trainer. So not a total failure, but nothing to write home about.

I also tested out a new sports bra, a Royce High Impact bra. Not good at all, I didn't see myself running, but I could feel my entire chest region bouncing around - when I watched myself on the cross trainer there was a LOT of movement. So that's a bra I won't be wearing for anything high impact. Now I'm struggling to find another bra in the right size - I'm one cup size too large for Shock Absorbers, perhaps I should just try and squash them in?

Day 2, Week 1

Distance :4.2K
Route : A run around the playing fields, and then onto the running track
Time : 32.40. Though there was a few minutes of faffing getting Groundskeeper Willie to let me into the running track.
Music: Goldfrapp - Supernature

The track was in a mess, the storms of the other week has caused a couple of trees to fall down, blocking a quarter of the track. So I ended up doing there and backs rather than laps. I did some half hearted speed training as well - some short bursts of extra fast running, followed by an even slower than usual jog while my heart rate settled down.


Tomorrow is a rest day. Hurrah!

Day 1 Week 1

Distance :4.1K
Route : Stretford Loop
Time : 29:35
Music: Same as last time. Electro house fits my pace very well, if I listen to anything with more beats per minute I nearly die!

Something I have noticed is that I find this mostly flat route very hard going. All I can think is that it's due to the concrete paving slabs that I'm running for most of the journey, all my other routes are mostly tarmac paths and they seem to be a bit more springy. I think I might try training on the local athletics track if I can persuade the local Groundskeeper Wullie to let me in.

Hmm.. other things going on in my life - I finally went out and brought a new mattress, so I'm no longer sleeping in my 'dent' which was giving me a bad back. It's a perfect example of my procrastination, I've had the money saved up for a new mattress for over a year, but I've only just gone to IKEA to buy a new one.

Running..

So another January and once again I've got a running target. This year I've entered the Manchester 10K on the 20th May. So once again I'm trying to learn to run an additional 5K (my furthest run so far has been 5K).

This does mean that the blog might get a bit boring as I use it to track my progress..

Run today

Distance 5.1 K
Route: Junction 1
Elapsed Time: 44:23
Music: http://www.goodgreef.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64650&highlight=flintoff


On a more personal note, I drove last weekend to Scotland on the A68. I stopped at Carter Bar border crossing and persuaded someone to take my photo in front of the sign for Scotland. It's a family tradition really, my grandad must have photos of my mam and myself stood next to the border signs for every year we went to Scotland on holiday.They almost are like height charts, some people have notches in their door frames, my family has photos at Carter Bar.

I passed!!!!

I passed my spanish course with the Open University. I'm so happy as I've always perceived myself as being incompetent at foreign languages. My grade wasn't fabulous (about a B-) but it's the best I've ever done.

I'm positively giddy and looking forward to doing the course next year that will give me the other half of my Certificate in Spanish.

Ow, ow, ow

Had my flu jab today...

Owie.

me duermo...

Only 3 weeks until my Spanish exam! Yoiks! I've just been away on the summer school for my Open University course, which was a great experience. My head is full of spanish grammar, hopefully all of it won't leak away.

Unfortunately the airline lost my luggage so all of my books are missing. Nightmare!!

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 60% Green Lantern 55% Superman 50% Iron Man 50% Hulk 45% Catwoman 45% The Flash 40% Batman 35% Wonder Woman 33% Robin 30% Supergirl 23%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Can you ride tandem ?

I hate cycling. I get terrified by traffic, my starts are wobbly and I can't even ride with one hand off the bars. By contrast, Mark is a great cyclist, covering 50 miles without even worrying.

There has never been a way for us to both go cycling together, so to try and redress this I looked into riding a tandem. As a good tandem is expensive we booked some basic training with http://www.tandeming.co.uk/ and a longer ride on a later date. The tandem was collected from http://www.bicycledoctor.co.uk/ a very friendly bike shop in Rusholme.
After several very wobbly starts we pottered around the park and got our balance. As the 'stoker' my responsibilities were simple. Maintain cadence, don't lean with the bike on corners and don't lean round to try and see where we're going.

We were riding a Landescape tandem, which was surprisingly light and coped with our height difference (6ft 4 to 5ft).

I enjoyed riding the tandem, as it was all the 'fun' of cycling that people talk about, without the wobbles, steering issues and the fear of traffic. Unfortunately Mark found that riding a tandem took away all the good things in cycling for him, he had to keep me informed about what was happening in front, he found the bike cumbersome to manoever and the bike felt slow to him.

Riding tandem also feels slightly ridiculous, dogs think tandems are a work of satan, people actually laugh and in one memorable moment we shocked a small child out of a tantrum.

I'd ride one again though, and I recommend renting one first to find out if it's for you.

If you want smooth starts, I've got a handy hint. Normally they talk about it being important to both push hard on the pedal to get the bike going ( for our riding it was the right pedal we started with), but to get a smooth start the stoker needs to not press the right pedal so hard, but to put a lot of welly into the left pedal, to keep the bike going while the driver gets on.

Done it!!!

I completed my 5K, raising £245 for Cancer Research. My time was an appalling 46 minutes, looking on the upside it means my personal best time can only get better.

5 days time

And I'll have run my first 5K.

I've started running in the great outdoors which is a bit of a challenge for me. I don't have any natural instincts when it comes to pacing myself so end up completely knackered.

I'm definitely improving though - I have a 4 km route that I'm mostly running. First itme round I must have walked at least 1.5 km... tonight I only walked 0.5 km. I'm having terrible trouble with blisters at the minute, my right foot is permanently sporting at least one. I'm starting to think it might be the shoes, as I've tried blister plasters, lubing up my foot with anti rub stick, tight laces, loose laces, special socks. Anyone got any better ideas?

I'm having a lot of strange dreams at the minute, probably brought on by the new car. I've dreamt about being carjacked 3 times in the past fortnight, once was very similar to what happened to me, once it was a bit surreal as I was rescued somehow and end up in a nightclub, once I manage to overpower the carjacker and tie him up with some zip ties I'd kept in my handbag.

Where to now?

I can now run 30 minutes (very, very slowly). So what do I do next? I'm still covering about 3.5 Km in those 30 minutes, so I really need to extend the range, without massively increasing the time I'm running. Hmmm.

In other news I've finally got my new car. It's very blue, but that's about all the information I'm going to give about it, just in case car-jackers read blogs.

Another girl, another planet.

Still training for my run - this week it's 15 minutes run, 1 minute walk, then another 15 minutes run. It was a bit of a struggle, but I'm still on target. It feels strange as most people are doing a Race for Life now, while mine is 6 weeks away (or so.. not that I'm counting Lol!). I'm worried that I'll be outpaced by my running partner - apparently she's training at a faster pace (12 minute miles, where mine is about 15 minute miles, barely a brisk walk). My only hope is I'm training for longer durations, so that might balance out in the end.

It's Marks birthday in a week - he's not a happy bunny as it is a major milestone birthday. I only hope he doesn't take the approach favoured by Mark Oaten to cope with turning 40 and losing his hair.

I'm still dreaming about the Sisters of Mercy. This is wrong on so many levels. Andrew Eldritch get out of my dreams!!

Hot metal and methedrene

It's been a busy month for me - I've had customers working in the centre pretty much every day and even when I was on holiday I was sitting in on conference calls to try and stop things going out of control.

My running is progressing, I can now run for 12 minutes, have a rest, then run for another 12. My goal is to be running for the full 30 minutes before the end of the month. I honestly didn't think I'd get this far in the training, but I'm determined to improve my fitness.

Last week I went to see The Sisters of Mercy and they were fantastic. I can't believe I'm getting the goth love all over again and I keep looking at innapropriate clothes on ebay. My only misgivings regarding the performance of The Sisters were related to the quality of the sound system they had used, the vocals by Mr Eldritch were as powerful as I'd imagined them to be. I even ended up in the mosh pit for the last part of the concert.