THE MOONWALK

It’s been a while. A really long while since I wrote my Marathon recap, and a while since I did any real exercise. I dipped a toe into a Spinning class, loved it, but haven’t been back since (next week!). I have attended 2 embarrassing Body Pump Classes, and felt weak whilst doing them but amazing afterwards. I have walked 26.2 miles for WalktheWalk breastcancer charity. And I have now been on two 2 mile runs. 

My exercise break has had a lot to do with my feet- unfortunately I got some pretty gruesome blisters during the marathon, despite all the advice I took on trainers and socks, and strangely, not suffering from any blisters during training. I had to wear flipflops for a week afterwards, and found walking pretty painful. Once those blisters started to heal, I took advantage of some free class passes at Fitness First and attended a Spinning class and a Body Pump class, both of which I hope to repeat regularly in the future.

I had signed up a while ago to take part in the MoonWalk with work, and so started ‘training’ the following week, this involved me walking home twice- all of 6 miles, and one longish walk with my colleagues at the weekend ending at a local pub!

The idea of the MoonWalk is that 17,000 women (and a few token men) walk through 26.2 miles through London, overnight, in their bras, and raise money and awareness of BreastCancer. This was the 15^th year and had a ‘Rock and Roll’ theme. Many people walked in just their bras, but our group wasn’t that brave and wore t-shirts underneath them (and coats over them when we got cold at 3am!)

The night of the MoonWalk arrived and I felt totally underprepared- I hadn’t slept that well the previous night, and had been for a pub lunch with friends during the day. Still, I made my way to Hyde Park to meet up with the rest of the team. We hung around in the VIP tent before our start, unfortunately instead of the pre walk carb loading pasta that we had been promised, in our tent there was actually a really odd selection of mini meals, including Clam Chowder...does anyone want that before an 8 hour walk?

Around 11pm we realised that some of the Celebs were making their way to the start line, and not wanting to be left at the back, we followed them. Unfortunately we weren’t paying too much attention, and accidently followed the celebs up some stairs to wave off the starting walkers and officially start the race! Whoops! After snapping a couple of photos, we made our way to the start zone, sneaking through the barriers and flashing our VIP passes!

I found it a bit of an anticlimax at the start, as unlike the marathon, you don’t really pick up your pace once you cross the start line. But it was fun seeing so many women in fancy bras/costumes. The first 10 miles were fun, pretty busy and we entertained ourselves by chatting. We also had to make a bathroom pit stop or two, but luckily didn’t have to queue for too long.

But then the half marathoners split off to head back to Hyde Park, whilst we kept trudging on. At one point I said to Jo, ‘they only have 3 miles left and we have 16’, that was not such a great moment! To entertain ourselves we plugged in Monaz’s speakers and blared our some music from her rucksack. I think people around us liked our singing but probably not.

Once we walked through Battersea Park and into Chelsea, things got a little depressing. It was dark, cold and very quiet, and for these miles we had to plough up and down deserted residential streets. This is when the anorak and ipod were brought out. 13 slow, pretty painful miles ensued. Unfortunately I had got blisters around mile 6 on top of my marathon blisters and my feet were really sore. Everytime we stopped for the loo or at a traffic light it was seriously painful to start walking again.

The worst few miles for me were between miles 18 and 22 (similar to the London marathon), we had a very welcome Hot Chocolate stop, only to discover that there were absolutely no loo’s for the next 8 miles! It was very very uncomfortable, but I was so pleased to see the bathrooms in St James’s park, and perked up a lot after a quick stop!

We were so pleased to reach the mile 25 marker in Hyde Park only to discover that the final mile felt like the longest of them all. We found that throughout the route not all of the mile markers were actually a mile apart, some seemed to have been placed closer or further apart for convenience. Very annoying, and particularly so after my Garmin died at mile 15- obviously did not charge the batteries!

We crossed the finish line at 7am- without an official time but we think it took about 7 and a half hours. We were thrilled to be finished but rather disappointed that the VIP tent had shut- we had received texts from the half marathoners telling us there was coffee and croissants waiting for them in the VIP tent when they had finished.

We hopped in taxi’s home and i literally couldn’t be in bed quick enough. I had a quick shower, inspected my blisters then passed out for the next couple of hours! Due to the pain in my feet I actually think that the walking MoonWalk was worse than running the actual marathon- never again!! I am so impressed by the women who do it each year and raise thousands for WalktheWalk, there was even one woman who was completing the course twice!!

SPINNING

On Monday I ventured to my first Spinning class ever. Now that my marathon training is over, I have set myself the task of trying out new classes to find out which ones I enjoy. I've always been really intimidated by the thought of group exercise classes as I have never felt fit enough and didn’t want to embarrass myself. With my fitness levels at the highest they’ve been for years, I decided to bite the bullet and give classes another go.

I signed up for a week free class pass at Fitness First through Zest magazine, and used my first class token after work. I was luckily allowed to sign up over the phone as it was my first class, but normally the list opens half an hour before the class. It was chaos at the reception desk when I arrived with people trying to sign up, A very unhelpful guy behind the desk was being rude to everyone, including me, and claimed to know nothing about the Zest deal.  He was also telling people to go and get changed before signing up, yet when those people came back to sign up, the list was full. Thankfully I was already on the list so grabbed my token and went to get changed.

The room was packed with people and bikes, and most of the bikes had water and towels on. At first I thought this was a thoughtful extra from the gym, complimentary water bottles would be so nice, however I quickly found out that they were already taken! I found one free bike right at the back in the corner, which suited me fine for my first time.


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The instructor came in and seemed to know quite a few people- always a good sign that people are returning to one of his classes. He asked if it was anyone’s first time- er only me! He came over and explained how to increase the resistance and checked that my pedals were the right level, and said that I could go out and get water any time in needed to.

Note to self; bring water and a towel to the next spinning class!

The lights went off with only UV lights still on, and the music cranked up, creating a disco/nightclub vibe. It felt oddly exciting, and made me feel a lot less self-conscious knowing that no-one could see me! Unfortunately, it was at this point that I discovered my black top and leggings were covered with white specks that showed up bright and clear on my clothes- I promise they were clean!

We began with a warm up, with a low resistance and some stretching, and push ups on the bike.

We then upped our resistance... I didn’t crank it up too much as I didn’t know how my legs would feel. I don’t cycle much, and this was my first post-marathon exercise. We alternated between sitting and standing, increasing our resistance gradually for 7 minutes on what our instructor called ‘A killer hill’. We were at a effort level of 10/10 for the final minute and my thighs started to feel the burn.  Next we turned the resistance right down and did some sprints.

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Then on to intervals; changing up the resistance for 90 seconds of high resistance standing cycling, followed by 30 seconds on low resistance sitting. This was pretty tough, and really got me sweating and my heart pumping. I was really glad to be directly by the air conditioning unit especially with the ‘no towel or water’ situation.

Our final push was another long ‘hill’ where we started at an effort level of 7/10 and cranked it up to 10 again. After a cool down, we hopped off our bikes to stretch out our legs. (I actually got stuck between my bike and the wall and the sweet lady next to me had to help me out).

I actually really enjoyed the class, and felt like I’d had a good cardio workout. My feet are still feeling a little fragile and so it was nice to get some cardio in without running! It's also good to get a bit of cylcing practice in before I get back on my real bike and on the road- not to mention the cycling bit I am doing as part of a relay triathlon in 2 months time! With all that in mind, I will definitely be incorporating spinning classes into my new workout routine.