Completed the 15 minute run today as per our training schedule!  Definitely feeling stronger!  What an amazing feeling.  Looking so forward to getting stronger and stronger! From tomorrow and for the rest of June and then July we are going to be doing mainly 3 and 5k's, think I am going to savour these runs because it's just going to start getting harder and harder!

Before I begin the next blog, I just want to make an apology in advance to all the grammar police out there.
Grammar is not one of my strongest points but hopefully you all get the gist of what I am trying to say and don't need to make use of google translate from giberish to english! :-)

Okay, so today is our LAST MINUTES day!  ie the last day we get to run with minutes and not kilometres! Which means we are slowly (very slowly still), moving forward!

Actually, I lie.  We wont be able to do our run today because we (my sister and flower girls) have our final dress fitting tonight for Shelley's wedding (my gorgeous little sister I spoke about in my first blog.  She is 31 but will always be my "little" sister!). 

Soooo, we'll do our 15 minute run tomorrow, that's Wednesday 19 June 2013!

I'll be back to blog at the end of the week!

AND..... so we are well into week 4 now of training! 

I have been delaying starting this blog until I knew that we (Gareth, my wonderful man) and I committed to this whole heartedly (well mainly me). 

I am super proud of myself so far I must say!  (and Gareth ofcourse).

My objective with this blog is to document my achievements, create awareness for the wonderful organisation taht I will ALSO b running for and ofcourse all of the other juicy stuff like when I am not doing so well!!

Let me begin with how I made this wild, preposterous and typically impulsive decision....most of my off the wall ideas start with a glass of wine...and so the comrades idea was born!

I had had a few glasses of wine (this was about  1 week before my 38th birthday infact it was the 11 May 2013, feeling rather sorry for myself and had been for sometime, not going to bore you with the negativity, I'm not wild about feeling like that!  I felt like I had hit a roadblock with my job, had injured my calf when playing my 2nd EVER game of outdoor hockey since school and just feeling like I needed something BIG!  I felt like I had absolutely NO GOALS!!!

Now normal people will probably choose a smaller, more doable goal, like if you are going to like run, maybe start with a 21km! Nooooo, not Mandy! Comrades it is!!  ESPECIALLY when I have never un further than 10km's!

If I rewind just a little bit, prior to the night I made this decision.  For some reason, I cannot recall, I must have subscribed to the bonitas novice running programme, I think it was when I was attempting to run 10k's at that stage.  Anyway, I have been receiving thier newsletters ever since.  So that was the first thing that got me thinking, specifically their one edition that was about "how to get through the comrades" and certain tips and tricks about getting through this gruelling day!  ONE of them was to run for something or someone!  I read a few stories about all this and it really did get me thinking!  But that was that and I closed my laptop and went home.

Until this fateful night, I called up a friend who has done the comrades before and is a seasoned long distance runner!  Sadly, she didn't make the cut off time BUT as far as I am concerned she still ran the race because she got as far as she did! HATS' OFF JUST FOR GETTING TO THE START, let alone all the way to 45th cutting!! (It was a down run)!  I called her and posed the crazy question to her and we laughed about it and we both committed then and there!  It was also at this point that I decided that I am going to run for BOBBI BEAR!  An organisation that is committed to children who are abused and raped by the very people who are supposed to look after them! The "BIG" people!  Now it seems like this is something that I am going to be 'using' as my motivation to get through to the end, well let me tell you, it may be, but I couldn't think of anything better to "use" than the opportunity of creating awareness about this organisation and the incredible work they do!  Sadly, they exist, but thank God for people like Jacqui and Eureka and all the people who work with them! www.bobbibear.org.za - please go and look at what they do!

I came running downstairs to Gareth who was watching TV in the lounge, and told him my news!! Typical Gareth style, should I say, typical, wonderful Gareth style - he just said, okay my love, go for it!! I'll support you all the way! NO questions, NO negative questions like, shew babe, do you think you can do it!! He just simply believes in me and supports me in all I do or attempt to do!

The second person I told that night, was my little sister Shelley, who is my inspiration!  She did the comrades in 2012 and I was there with all our friends ready to make a big noise for her when she got to the same 45th cutting "welcome to Durban" sign!  She sounded concerned (he he he), but also never said anything to make me feel like I was just being my normal irrational self!  Shell, simply started with advice and tips and spoke about what programme to follow and suggested I follow the same programme as her and Doug (fiance) did when they ran the comrades, but obviously not the one for regular runners, the one for NOVICE runners!

Along the way, I managed to coax Gareth into running the comrades with me and this is where we are at now!
17 June 2013 and we are well onto our 4th week of the programme!  At this point of the programme, I have to tell you that it is a WALK INTHE PARK!  I giggle to myself everytime someone says, hows your training going and how far are you running now!?

Here is the first 5 weeks of the programme :-)

June 2013
Week 1:  10 mins, 10 mins, 10 mins (Tues, Thurs & Sun)
Week 2:  10 mins, 15 mins, 15 mins (Tues, Thurs & Sun)
Week 3:   15 mins, 15 mins, 20 mins (Tues, Thurs & Sun)
Week 4:   15 mins, 3km's, 3km's (Tues, Thurs & Sun)
Week 5:   3km's, 3km's, 5km's (Tues, Thurs & Sun)

So as at today 17 June 2013, we have just completed week 3! And yesterday (Sunday 16th), we did the 20 minute one!  I have A LOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG way to go, when I got to 10 minutes yesterday, I looked at my watch and thought OMG, I still have another 10mins to go!!! NEVER MIND 12+ HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the BEGINNING of my blog and I am going to blog as often as I can!  So PLEASE read, and if you do read it once, please KEEP reading! This is the place I am going to probably turn to when I think I absolutely CANNOT do this!! I know there are friends and family who probably have their reservations about me finishing this, don't blame them, I'm not the greatest at sticking to a project or seeing something through to the end!

Friends, family and Bobbi Bear....watch me do this!!!