My hubby is working awful hours and leaves for work at around 6.45am. Roseanne’s hubby is away for a while. It’s been looking grim as far as when we’d get out for a run. Today seems to have solved that.  Roseanne came over with Jaydee, and I played with the kiddies while she headed out. Then, I grabbed Sinner and did a 5km loop while she minded the 6 little ones. It was really tough. I don’t know whether it was because it was in the afternoon and I was winding down, or whether it was because we’d reached our goal and didn’t have that mental motivation, but I struggled towards the end. But, if we can do this a couple of times a week, either here or at Roseanne’s place, we’ll keep progressing. My plan is to stick at 5km for the 2 months my hubby is working 12 hours a day, then start extending to make it up to 10km, with our next big goal the Mothers Day Classic in May, which is 10km. It’s a fundraiser for breast cancer research I believe, which is a condition that’s close to both our hearts.

I was awake at 5.30am today with my hubby, and when I looked out, it was still a bit dark for me to be comfortable to go out. I’ve ordered a personal alarm from www.smartalarms.com.au and I reckon in a couple of weeks when it’s light a bit earlier, I should be able to get out and do my 5km before my hubby goes to work. I doubt anybody would hassle someone with a big red cattle dog, but if they did, they’d possibly hurt my dog and I’d not be happy about that.

We have a pet expo each year here in Brisbane. I know the lady who organises it.  Given that they’d have public liability insurance to cover the event, I wonder if we couldn’t include a fun run for dogs in the expo schedule. It would sort out one of the big issues with that sort of event - insurance. The other thing we’d need are vets on hand to monitor the dogs’ well being, but that may also be achievable. I’ll have to have a think about that one…

With apologies to the band that wrote that song, hehe. My kiddies are very keen to do the couch to 5k program, and I have a young pup who is itching to get out and about. So, we’re going to do week 1 for a few weeks and just see how it all goes.

We went out this morning, and gee they did well. Considering that when I started, doing the 60 second runs was nearly the end of me, they just breezed through it. Young Mr 5 had a bit of a stitch at one point but he kept on going after a little rest. Miss 7 is very enthusiastic and the pup loved it. This will be fun.

I was up nice and early this morning, I wanted to get myself organised before I had to help the kiddies get dressed. Felt pretty good all round. Picked up Roseanne on the way and we got good parking and ended up at the start line around 8.30am. It was already very crowded, reports say that 7000 folk did the 4.5km distance, which means the 12k had around 23000, don’t even want to think about that one!

Hubby and the kids went to the start zone for the walkers, and eventually we headed off. It was pretty crowded at the start and it took us a good couple of minutes to get to the start line, but then we found our space and started running. Overall a good run, we kept up a steady pace, and finished the run just under 30 minutes, according to the finish line clock which appears to have been fast, and also it would’ve started when the run started, about 3 minutes before we got across the finish line. So, still think we did under 30 minutes.  I felt good afterwards, and was really impressed with Roseanne, she’d had major interruptions to her running in the last couple of weeks and I don’t think she’d ever run that distance, but she did it!!

Onto bigger and better things now, we’re looking at doing a 10km run in May. We talked about doing the B2B 12km run next August, but frankly, having seen the number of people on the bridge, and hearing horror stories of waiting two hours for a return bus to the start line to collect your car, I don’t think we’ll worry about it.

Didn’t get a chance to bike today, I was hoping for a session just to keep myself going, but didn’t. Had to work tonight and also will be working tomorrow morning, so overall just a bit of a blah day.

Sinner was happy to come out with me today, and I did a fair enough time, I think. I seem to have my pace pretty standard at just over 6 minutes per km. It was tough today, I’m expecting it will get easier. My shin was okay, but I iced it when I got back anyway, just to be safe. Don’t tell my hubby, but I enjoyed myself, I’d missed going out for a run while I was on the bike, and I found also that it was a bit hard to get up and on the go, after a few sleep in’s. I’m going to get back into the 3 runs a week next week. I’ve found some other music. Although the podcasts have been wonderful, Robert and I don’t really share the same taste.

I’m going to have to do something with that pup of mine. He’s got so much energy, I took him for a one hour walk today and he was still bursting out of his skin. Probably also has something to do with the fact that he’s figured out how to get through the fence into the neighbour’s yard, and he’s not allowed out unattended until I get it fixed up. I’m thinking of taking him out a couple of times for the week 1 program, 60 sec jog and 60 sec walk, until he decides he doesn’t want to do any more. I can’t see that having too much of an adverse effect on his growing limbs.

I’m looking forward to Sunday.