Thursday photo #336

Having craved routine for so long during the summer, everything is starting to feel a bit like groundhog day now isn’t it? School. Home. Taxi the kids around. Listen to news about the pandemic. Read about the pandemic on social media. Talk to people about the pandemic. And repeat ad infinitum.

Learning to sit still (and crochet)

People say that babies are either walkers or talkers. Which is nonsense in my opinion because Libby was both and Lia was neither. Nonetheless, until Libby found her voice I would have said she was a walker. She wasn’t early to walk on her own, but she wanted to be holding onto something to stand up from a very young age. If at all possible, she’d be moving around. As she got older, walking turned to running, running turned to cartwheels, cartwheels turned to backflips and sitting still never got a look in.

Fast forward eight years and she is still absolutely dreadful at sitting still. I have no idea how teachers cope with her because at home, she can’t watch the television unless she’s upside down. We watch films once in a blue moon because she has to sit still for too long and she hates it. Occasionally though, she finds something that stops her in her tracks. Most recently, that thing has been crochet.

A few weeks ago, my mum taught her to crochet. As soon as she started learning, she wanted to make a baby blanket for a family member whose baby was due this month. Miraculously, she has sat still for hours in the last month crocheting her blanket so that when the baby arrived, it was ready. Sure enough, she finished this weekend in the nick of time.

Back to marathon training

Training for a marathon during a pandemic is like groundhog day. I have been training for Brighton Marathon since September 2019. Over the past few weeks, I have upped my mileage again. I only do one long run a week and the others are relatively short. I’ll stick with that approach right through until the marathon. I run every day anyway and if I try to do more than one long run a week, it just takes up too much time. I know I’m prone to feeling overwhelmed if I take on too much, so once a week will be plenty.

I’m now back up to nine miles for my long run. This is probably a little premature, I don’t really need to be running that far. Having said that, I’m happy that I am. I have built it up really slowly and I won’t go too much further now until the new year. I feel fitter and stronger than I have in a long time. I’m open water swimming at least once a week as well and I’ve lost quite a lot of weight without too much effort. Perhaps the postponement was a good thing for me because I feel like by April, I really will be completely ready.

It’s funny how sometimes a rushed photo grabbed at the last minute can be one of the best I take. We were just running out to ballet and I took this quick snap of the girls. I really like it.