Here is my lift of gift dates and idea which I will update as I have a number of blanks at the moment:

I was planning on making the tile socks for my brother in law for Christmas but it’s just dawned on my how close his birthday is so best start looking at some wool for these. I think I might also make them for my OH BIL but he is really into his music so first I’ll see if I can find any musically inspired socks before committing to this.

I had already thought of making a cat doorstop for my OH’s sister but my sister also likes cats so I think I should make two and give one to both of the sisters!

Present Bows

I have just been searching the internet for ideas for presents (both birthdays and Christmas) and have found this great article on making your own bows to put onto presents just from magazine pages – fantastic way of  making gifts look nice and glam without spending money  - here is the link to the article.

Door Stops

Here are some lovely doorstops that I would love in my house but the dog would just think they were his playthings – however great gift ideas, the cat would be great for my SIL who not only loves cats but also uses doorstops (of the wooden variety) as I noticed when we went around at New Year

10 Things to Do with a Tea Towel

Ok, so this is borrowed from the Money Saving Expert Forum but here is the list for safe keeping so that I can find it when I need it:

1. for making cakes with for the kitchen- include brush, handcream,rubber gloves and there’s a lovely parcel,
2. peg bags,
3.carrier bag holders,
4.nice thick material for door stops,
5.retro teddies, – possibly microwave bed warmers?
6.teacosy,
7. tote bag
8. Baby bibs http://makeitandloveit.blogspot.com/…-baby-bib.html

During 2010 I aim to get much more organised which I hope will manifest itself in several different ways:

Firstly I know that keeping my paperwork up to date and regularly reconciling my bank will ensure that I keep track of my finances which in turn will ensure that I stick to my budget and pay off credit cards which is my main aim for this year (and next) so get the balance down to zero.

Secondly, and this will help with the above as well, I want to plan all my gifts for the year in advance and aim to give homemade presents where possibile. I have already been going through some of my knitting books and planned a couple of the gifts I aim to make – hence the preparation needs to start now so that I will have time to make some of the gifts.

Thirdly I hope that in planning in advance I will ultimately save time (and money) since I will spend less time procrastinating and putting things off.

So below is my list of what I need to do so that I can get organised:

• Make a master gift list: list all people that I will need to get gifts for and sort into birthday order (so the closest ones are dealt with first) and write down ideas for birthdays and Christmas gifts
• Write everyone’s holidays onto the kitchen calendar and my own personal diary – this includes parents holidays to ensure continuity of childcare cover and school holidays along with big events like birthdays and my marathon.
• Make a “simple” housework plan of tasks that need to be carried out every week – see if any of these can be delegated along with estimated times to complete (this will come in handy soon)
• Make a list of household tasks that need to be carried out periodically (monthly, quarterly) and schedule when these can be done so that they are done evenly throughout the year, for example cleaning carpets, defrosting the freezer, turning mattresses, servicing the boiler, etc.
• I’ve already made a start on this during my time off from work this Christmas, but pick a room a month and spend a half day (or whatever is required) decluttering it.
• Make meal plans for each week so I know what needs to be bought when I go shopping and save money by not buying unnecessary food that will not be used.
• Sense Check: with everything that I want to fit into any given week – making gifts, training for a marathon, housework, “real” work, me-time – estimate the time that each task will take to ensure that I have some sort of balance and set out enough time to get everything done.  I might need to let some of the less important housework slide (or give pocket money out for dusting!) so that other things can take precedence
• Re-assess at the beginning of March to see how things are going, then again in June and October by which time I will hopefully be a long way towards having the Christmas gifts sorted and will develop a more detailed plan for Christmas itself which will include preparing the Christmas cake and pudding in advance (I had to pay £14 this year for a Christmas cake and it certainly wasn’t as tasty or as big as what I have made in the past…)

If I had made an actual list of 100 things to do before I die then “running a marathon” would be up there near the top of the list – in fact it is one of the few things that I know that I have always wanted to do ….  So last year I decided to stop messing around hoping that someday I would achieve this particular goal and actually set about to attempt it.

First I set about training for my local half marathon, I did 10 weeks training for it will my longest run at 12.5 miles (it was only supposed to be 10 miles but I took a wrong turn and got lost!) and then found out that I needed to have an operation that meant I was unable to take part in the marathon as I needed 4 weeks rest with no exercise – I was specifically told that I WOULD NOT be taking part in the half   I was completed gutted that I couldn’t do the half, especially after all the training that I had done but after a couple of months wallowing (is that how it is spelt?) I decided that I needed to get back onto the wagon. 

I searched around for an appropriate marathon but couldn’t really find one locally, but then spotted that the Edinbugh one was quite flat and in May which left loads of time to get into shape… I registered immediately before I could change my mind and then proceeded to tell everyone about it so that I couldn’t back out either, so now for the hard work – let the training commence…..

In order to monitor my own training I have set up a separate blog to log my training Vics Marathon

I’ve spent the last few months working on getting the look and feel of this website right instead of working on the contect – which, lets face it, is actually the important bit  

It’s just lots of fun for me to mess about with the code and I keep thinking that the rest will sort itself out – but it obviously doesn’t.  I’ve also been busy looking (and getting) a new job, which will actually increase my time away from home instead of improve my work-home life balance as I will have to commute to Manchester every day and no doubt get stuck in the endless jams that I currently only hear about on the radio (my current commute is through gorgeous countryside and I get really excited every time I see the baby lambs!)

In addition to that I have a minor operation about three weeks ago and have been told that I am unable to exercise for 4 weeks which means that the local half marathon which I had been training for (and actually took place yesterday) had to be given a wide berth – still there’s always next year – and that has also meant that I ‘ve been unable to run as well.  Still only one more week of “rest” and I can start running again.  This also co-incides with me starting my new job and I have yet to work out whether the offices have the facilities that will enable me to run during my lunch hour (ie. does it have a shower?) otherwise I will be running in the dark and cold evenings which will certainly be a shock to the system.  Still in order to increase my motivation I have entered (and been accepted) to run in the Edinburgh Marathon next year which takes place in May – so I have to put the training in.

Hopefully I will start to get some more detail in the actual website and slowly get this thing off the ground!  Wish me luck

Ok so I’m a little behind as I am already at the end of the 13th!  Still I’ve managed to plan a list for almost 2 weeks and in theory the shopping bill – excluding the price of the salmon and the fruit and vegetables is around £50 so maybe around £70-80 for the two weeks isn’t too bad.

As always this is not necessarily the order in which everything will be eaten but it’s a reasonable guide:

• Tue – Sausages in cider and mash (sausages from the freezer)
• Wed – Lemony roast chicken couscous
• Thu – Sweet and sour pork (pork from the freezer)
• Fri – Lasagne and rice (all from the freezer)
• Sat – Meatloaf with cabbage and mash
• Sun – Warm poached salmon, new potatoes and green beans
• Mon – Tortellini with tomato sauce
• Tue – Salmon and spinach pasta (with leftover salmon)
• Wed – Chicken curry with rice
• Thu – Salmon fishcakes and chips or wedges (with leftover salmon)
• Fri – Paprika chicken and pea, potato omelette

Fortunately I have quite a bit of meat in the freezer which I really need to get used up.  I also have a duck in there that I really need to do something with…

Finally I need to come up with a desert for Sunday dinner – I’m thinking of something warming like rice pudding or maybe a sponge pudding.  I think I might opt for the sponge pudding with golden syrup as the leftovers will go down a treat on Monday.

Question: How long should intervals be?

Answer: Generally the ratio of

time spent on the repetition: time spent on the rest interval

depends on what you want to develop (stamina or speed). The length of the rest interval largely dictates the intensity of the repetition, so by altering the length of the rest interval you can adjust a workout to developing either stamina or speed.

Therefore a shorter rest interval (one part repetition to one part interval) develops stamina, or aerobic power. The short rest interval doesn’t allow enough time to remove all of the lactic acid that builds up during the training session, so as you begin each repetition you will already be a fatigued state, and these sessions will develop stamina.

A longer rest interval (one part repetition to three parts interval) is good if you want to do very intense (fast) repetitions in order to build your speed. The longer rest interval allows more time to recover and therfore allows you to put more intensity (speed) into each repetition.

Realistic you need a mixture of the two. For developing stamina for distance running, shorter rest intervals are ideal. However for shorter distances, or that final kick to the finish line in a long distance race speed is important, so longer rest intervals with intense (faster) reps are ideal.

Training official starts today for my half marathon in October. My first run was some interval training..

Log:

• Distance – 4.18 miles
• Time – 38 min 40 secs
• Pace – 9:15
• Heart Rate – 181 avg (96%), 197 max

Splits for the distance:

1. 9:43
2. 9:02
3. 9:12
4. 9:12

Comments:

I ran with my leg taped up today and it felt loads better. The intervals were quite tough near the end and I gave up on the last repeat – I didn’t realise it was the last one and thought I still had one more to do, if I had have known it was the last one I would have pushed myself a bit more, but thinking that I still had more to do, I felt that I needed to keep something in the tank!

Recorded the mileage in two parts since once I completed the original workout then it didn’t record any more but I still had about half a mile to go before I got back to the Mill, so I set the timer off again.

I’ve been doing a bit of research on knees to see if I can establish what is wrong with my left one which is causing me so much grief at the moment. I am due to start my training programme on Tuesday for the half marathon that I will be doing in October, so inevitably, I want to do whatever is necessary to try and get my knee right for next week – therefore I want to know what is wrong with it so that I can attempt to treat it in the correct way.

At the moment, I am trying to keep off it as much as possible; I don’t plan to go running for the next few days but I would like to go out on Sunday if it feels better. One way or the other, I will be giving it 2-4 days rest depending how it feels on Sunday.

I’m pretty sure that it is nothing serious, but I don’t think that it is an overuse injury. There is no swelling at all, but it is very tender on the inside and to the bottom of my knee. It is even worse after sitting for any length of time – which is a bind since I work at a desk all day long! So with the research that I have done at the moment I am leaning towards Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome. I’ve listed below a few resources on this which detail the problem and how to treat it.

• Family Doctor
• Physio Room
• Sports Injury Clinic
• Return to Fitness

In general it looks like I need to rest it (which is something that I’m already doing), take ibuprofen (already doing), ice it and get a knee support.  So I’m already doing 2 out of 4 which isn’t bad.  I just need to ice my knee now and get myself a knee support, which I suppose is something that I should have in reserve anyway in case of future problems.

Also I need to improve my quadriceps muscles, and my glutes (bum muscles).  Oddly enough I was talking with a colleague earlier today and they mentioned that spinning classes were a good way of strengthening quadriceps and glutes so maybe I should look into this!

My Garmin has finally arrived – actually it arrived on Monday and I went out with it then for a couple of miles but I haven’t updated Mondays log yet (will get to it at some point!)

Hopefully the link below will show my data so I don’t have to re-copy it in here but we shall see… if not, here are the details anyway:

Log:

• Distance – 2.19 miles
• Time – 19 min 54 secs
• Pace – 9:15
• Heart Rate – 178 avg (93%), 188 max

Splits for the distance:

1. 9:16
2. 9:13
3. 1:24

Comments:

My knee has been playing me up for the last week; it’s been fine when I run but afterwards it just feels tender. Today it felt bad whilst I was running so instead of doing the full Kerridge run that I had planned (about 3 miles but not measured properly) I ended up cutting it short and coming back via the canal. Knee still feels really tender and I really want to just rest it up, but since I’m at work, I can’t really have my legs up on the desk!