Weight

A mini challenge within my bigger challenge is to lose a stone before the 1st September.  My current weight and body fat percentage is 10st and 30%. My target is 9st and 27% body fat.  Its 22 weeks till the 1st September so that equates to losing .64lbs per week.  My methods are to do the occasional random 800 calorie fast days, some 1200 calorie counted days and generally just trying to avoid the carbs. All of these have worked for me in the past and in combination with the increased exercise, it should be a piece of cake! 

Not a picture of me but kinda sums up how I feel 

#loseweight #firelighterracetraining #running #firelighter #ultra

Image credit - www.freepik.com

Parkruns

There aren't many things that will make me get out of bed on a weekend, but I do make the effort to join our local Parkrun.  Although, sometimes I wonder why I do it when its cold and wet - and I oftern get passed by 5 year olds and 80 year olds!  The last 3 Parkruns have been very muddy which slows me down quite a lot and one week my feet got wet 😒. Thankfully the course has been altered a bit to avoid the worst bits.

I've just completed my 25th Parkrun in a time of 36:26 which is 7.29 mins/km.  My fastest time is 33:50 (assisted by the pacers) and my average (mean) is 36:03. I think these times aren't good but I did come 3rd in my age category of VW50-54.  Although this time isn't very fast it is still faster than I need to complete the Firelighter which I'm aiming for 8.48 mins/km which will give me around 50 mins spare time for checkpoints etc.  I hope that will be fast enough to complete the 57.2km challenge within the 9 hours time 😬

THE CHALLENGE

So, I might have been a bit hasty - I've entered an ultra marathon.  That might not be a big deal to some people but I'm 52 and at this point in time, I can barely shuffle around a parkrun. 

The race I've entered is the Firelighter which is the first day of a larger, 3 day ultra marathon, - the Ring of Fire which follows the beautiful Anglesey Coast Path.   

Race stats: 35.7 miles (57.2km) - time limit 9 hours - elevation c2,880ft (877m).

I read somewhere that, a challenge is only a challenge, when there is a chance of failure - so my personal challenge is just to finish within the time limit and trust me, that will be difficult enough! 

Race date is 1st September 2023 - 37 weeks 4 days from today.

This blog will chart my progress, follow the ups and downs and document my learning process.  Feel free to add helpful comments!