As many of you know, I’m a huge supporter of Cancer Research, by doing Race for Life. This is my fifth year doing it, and each year, I’ve tried to do something different – running, walking, 5km, 10km, alone and with friends. Pretty much every combination possible.

I was debating on Twitter about what to do this year when I think Gemma suggested that my four feet popped down to Bristol and did it with me. They’ve known me for 20 years so knew my mum as well as I know theirs.

So! On 9th June, we shall be running around the Downs for 5km – although this could change…perhaps a 3 (5 legged) race, skipping or walking backwards? We also need to find something we can all wear…my vote for dressing like the above photo was veto’ed. Damn it.

If you’d like to support us (and I know you would!) please visit our JustGiving page or text FEET88 £1 to 70070 (replacing the £1 with whatever amount you’d like!)

What should we do? What shall we wear?!

Saturday was my Race for Life event. Unlike other years, I was doing 10K, and unlike other years, the weather was crap. Both of these things combined meant that I didn’t enjoy the event as much as I have done previously. Its been at least 13 years since I’ve done any sort of cross country running in long wet grass and muddy puddles (oddly, it was always my “time of the month” when it was Cross Country time!) and after the second kilometre or so, we had a heavy rain storm which made me thankful I had my contacts in instead of wearing my glasses! It drizzled for the rest of the time, which was not fun. The course was poorly marked out as well – there was one girl who kept taking so many shortcuts and I still kept catching her up! I considered cheating like that, but I didn’t see the point – why bother?

I did the run in an hour and a half, which I’m not that pleased about – I think with more training and nicer weather, I would have been speedier, but I have a time to beat next year now I guess!

This might sound really obvious, but the 10K is more for the runner who is a bit more competitive, which is the opposite to what I’ve found with Race for Life events previously – an event thats about getting your friends together, having fun and raising money.

Despite all of this, I actually want to start running properly – actually getting out was fun for once, despite that I can barely walk now!

I love doing Race for Life, and I’m already looking forward to next years. I’m not sure yet if I want to do the 5K or the 10K – theres enough time to decide!

If you’d like to throw a little money my way for completing the 10K, my sponsorship page is still open for the next month or so. My target was £250, but I’m already on £400 – I’m so happy, thank you so so so much!

Bloody hell.

So when I signed up to do the 10k, 6 weeks seemed like such a long time.

But being out of the house for 12+ hours a day plus busy weekends plus I really like sleeping meant that I’ve had very little time to actually train.

And now, it’s almost the big event and I’m feeling the fear now.

I’ve bought new trainers and a new sports bra. (I’ve then gotten very stroppy that my trainers cost £20 but the bra was £37. THIRTY SEVEN POUNDS for what is basically a really elasticated crop top. See, stroppy)

I’m so so happy that I’ve reached my sponsorship target (thank you so much if you’ve donated!) but I would be ecstatic if I could raise much more than that! You can still donate on my sponsorship page – it’s quick, easy and you get to see some silly photos of me. What more do you want?

(I am truly overwhelmed by the response to my sponsorship page from people on Twitter – many of whom I’ve never met. Thank you thank you thank you. You guys are seriously amazing :))

Finally, finally, I’ve decided which race to do. And…er…I’ve gone for the 10K for some reason* With 6 weeks to go, I guess I should probably do some training!

This is my fourth year doing Race for Life, and as I’m sure you’re all aware by now, I run Race for Life to raise money for Cancer Research.

My mum died Christmas 2005 from cancer. By running Race for Life, I hope to raise a ton of money that can be used to fund research into treatments and cures

I’d really love you to join me in doing Race for Life this year, either in your own city or come and laugh at me in Bristol! Sign up via this link* and as a Cancer Research affiliate, I will receive £5 – which I’ll then donate straight back to Cancer Research. (And because I’m a UK tax payer, they’ll also be able to claim Gift Aid – in my muddled brain, this means that they’re getting more money back to them than they give out to encourage people to sign up. I think its a bit strange to have an affiliate link for a charity, but I guess its better than the money going to those people who pester you in the street!)

If you’d like to donate to me, my page can be found at raceforlifesponsorme.com/hayleyconstantine

* I was promised new trainers. I still have to get rid of 3 pairs to get them. Sob.

Its that time of year again when my thoughts turn towards Race for Life. I’ve done it three times so far (2007, 2009 and 2010) and have enjoyed it (well, as much as you can enjoy going around a 5k course)

You all know the story of why I do Race for Life (or at least, if you’ve read that blog post, you do) If you don’t, here’s the basic version: My mum died of cancer 5 years ago (which seems both so long ago and so recent) so I do Race for Life to raise money for Cancer Research in the aim that less people have to go through what we did.

This year, Race for Life in Bristol will be held on the weekend of the 9th and 10th of July. There will be three events, two 5k’s and one 10k. I’ve not yet signed up for one though because I’m not sure what I want to do. 5k is easily doable – I’ve walked it twice, and ran it once. I’d like to run (or at least attempt to run) this one, but I’d also like a bit of a challenge. Running it the first time was definitely a challenge, but is it still a challenge if I’ve already done it? 10k would be something new, but would I be able to do it? I have enough time between now and July to get my bum into gear, but I need new – well, new everything, but especially new trainers. (Being jobless isn’t really going to help there!)

If you’ve done a race like this before, which would you recommend? Any tips I should know about? Anyone fancy joining me?

Alex woke with my alarm, said “Todays phrase will be: ‘Sucks To Be You’”, and rolled back over to go back to sleep. With those inspiring words, I got ready.

I was up pretty early, partly from excitement/nerves, but partly because Zoe and James (and Homily!) were due to come round before we went up to the Downs.

Its silly really, I’ve done Race for Life twice before this year, and I felt more nervous for this race, even down to forgetting that I’d need some safety pins!

After a delay at the house, and an even longer one once we got to Clifton (have you ever tried to get a parking space up there when its busy?!), we parked up and headed towards the music that was playing. It was a bit of a hike from the car to the stage area, but we soon met up with Katey and Abbi

Here’s the five of us after the race.

I had left my back sign until the last minute as usual, and kept it simple. While we were waiting to set off, I heard the women behind me whispering “ooh she’s lost her mum” and felt guilty for making them feel bad!

Here’s Zoe and I setting off with Katey and Abbi in front. We were all feeling pretty lazy, so chose to walk. Katey started planning next years Race while we were walking – apparently we’re going to run and dress up in pink tutus. Uh oh.

We did the 5k in about an hour, and met up with Michaela, her mum, her mums friend and her boyfriend who was taking pictures and making videos. I can’t wait to see it! Michaela and her group ran the 5k in half the time it took us to walk it – that’s my aim next year!

As always, each Racer was given a goodie bag and a medal. Zoe’s look extra excited here because they let her have two medals – one for Homily!

As we were doing the final stretch, people were cheering everyone on, but when Homily appeared, there were a lot more cheers for her, so many people saying “Aww, look at the little dog!”

I’m so glad I managed to do the Race this year with a group of friends – it’s a lot easier to keep going with someone by your side! We had Alex and James on cheering duty – sadly they decided they needed to bring cameras with them as well. Cheers guys. (all pics in this post were taken by Alex)

Good luck to everyone that’s still left to do their Races. It seemed like last weekend was race day for my family – I had cousins in Chester and the North East (I think Darlington?) doing it on the Sunday. Yay!

If you’d still like to donate, please visit my Race for Life page at www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c – just because I’ve reached my target of £250 (thank you!) doesn’t mean you don’t have to donate ;)

I’m procrastinating from writing about the day at the moment, but until then, gere’s a pic of Zoe’s dog Homily who accompanied us!

If you’d still like to donate, please visit my Race for Life page at www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c

This has been the extent of my training. Yeah. Great idea. Silly girl.
But! The lovely Jayne at Race for Life has sent me a training plan which might help. She’s sent me the walking album, which at first I was a tad offended by, but then I remembered that I’m a lazy cow, and the running idea last year was er…interesting. (Some might say a failure. Shut up)

Lucy Wyndham-Read, celebrity women’s fitness expert and founder of LWR Fitness, has created two workout albums especially for Race for Life. These albums are designed to give the listener a “personal trainer experience” with a six week plan to get you up to speed to do a 5k.

I’ll be reviewing these tracks over the next fortnight and will let you know what I think!

If you’d like to sponsor me, please visit my Race for Life page at www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c

I’ll be giving the items in the photo above (and I’ll be adding more goodies to it between now and my Race day) to a random donator. For every £5 you donate, you’ll recieve a place in the draw, so donate £20, and you’ve got 4 chances to win!

Theres still quite a bit of time to enter this contest – I’ll be running it until 15th June, to make sure that I can get as much money out of you all as possible for Cancer Research!

So, how to donate? I prefer to use my sponsorship page, which you can find at www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c – its safe, secure, and it means I don’t have to chase after everyone with an envelope begging for money!

If you still want to donate, but don’t want to be entered, please drop me an email to hi [@] ceriselle.org with your details. If you want to donate something to this prize, get in contact!

I’ve been asked this question a few times lately when people have heard that I’m doing Race for Life for the third time this year, and I thought it would be a good idea to get it down into words (because my answer is usually “er…to raise money”)

As many of you probably know, my mum died of cancer in December 2005. When she was diagnosed in May 2005, Mum and Dad phoned me to tell me about it. (They were going to come down to Bristol that weekend, but I somehow knew that something was up.) I immediatly assumed the worst, but the doctors had told her that it was a very treatable form of cancer.

Throughout the summer, everyone was very positive, so I began to relax a little and webt back to University in September feeling rather confident that everything was going to be OK.

At the start of December however, we were told a different story. Things were much worse than originally though, and at that point, we were told Mum had about 3 weeks to live (and she managed to keep to that as well – exactly 21 days afterwards, she died)

Anyway.

So the reason why I choose to raise money for Cancer Research is because my thoery is that if Cancer Research recieves more money through things like Race for Life, then more research can be done, not only into things like detecting certain forms of cancer at an earlier stage, but also into different treatments and possible cures. The less people that have to go through what my family did, the better.

However, if I could, I would choose to split my fundraising money between Cancer Research and Macmillan. The Macmillan nurses were pretty good to my mum, and I know she appriciated the help and support that they gave her.

If you’re not itching to give some money to charity, then you can sponsor me to do the Race for Life in June by clicking here (or indeed, why not join me in Bristol on the 12th June by going here) or you can donate to Macmillan via this link

So, remember how the pain. Oh god, the PAIN amazing and fulfilling pleasure that running the Race for Life gave me last year? No, me either. (I lie, it was pretty awesome)

Well, its that time of year again when I debate about running it again, and this time, I’m wondering if anyone else would be interested in joining me?

Race for Life in Bristol is on 12th and 13th June at 11am. The first time that I did Race for Life, I was with a few friends, which is definitely what I missed about running it alone last year!

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on running it this year, more a leisurly jog/stroll/skip. (Skipping works quite well actually. So if you’ll be in Bristol (or thinking about it!) for that weekend, drop me an email [hi (at) ceriselle.org] or leave a comment.

If you don’t fancy coming to Bristol, or want to do it with your own group, check out the Race for Life website.

Decorate my back sign! The back sign is quite an important thing for Race for Life, where you say why you are running/walking/hopping/doing the worm.
Here I am with my back sign, dedicated of course, to my Mum.

I didn’t manage to take many pictures while actually running, so here are two pics I TwitPic‘ed to my Twitter

The Nivea boys doing a bit of a cheer routine to S Club 7 – “Reach”. With pom poms. Their mums must be so proud. (It was actually really funny though!)

One of my favourite fancy dress outfits! There was a lot of neon outfits worn, as well as a surprising amount of people wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I was dressed in joggers and a (Howies, of course) t-shirt.
Here’s a basic summation of each KM:
0 – 1 KM: Hey, this is pretty easy. I’m glad this is on the roady part of the Downs.
1 – 2 KM: Still going ok, my back is holding up pretty well considering…
2 – 3 KM: Ooh, starting to get a bit more difficult, but still running.
3 – 4 KM: ARGH PAIN PAIN PAIN – my back decided to give out, so had to walk :(
4 – 5 KM: Still in a lot of pain, trying to take Ibuprofen while walking, but managed to run the last half kilometre because there was no way I was walking over the finish line!
So I managed to complete it in just under 40 minutes. (Not sure of exact times, since I didn’t even get through the start point until about 6 minutes on the clock!)

Holding my medal for finishing the race!

I’m really pleased I did it, and happy that I managed to run most of it. If you would like to sponsor me still, the webpage is open until August, and that can be found at http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c. Thank you so so much to everyone who has sponsored me so far as well!

Hello lovely people who have sponsored me, ones who haven’t yet done so, and those who can’t (don’t worry, I’m not going to guilt trip you!)

The run is next weekend, and I am of course training hard. Which is to say I am drinking wine right now. Shut up. Thats training.

During my training for this run, I have rediscovered that
a) my back really hates physical exercise.
b) sports bras were invented by sadists and
c) why I was never picked for the running things at school.

But, theres only one week of this hell, and then I will be back on the sofa, seeing what crap is on the Virgin box (ok, I still do that anyway) and feeling pretty damn smug.

If you haven’t sponsored me yet, and you would like to do so, please go to www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c

xxx

I’m a terrible person.
I promised the amazing people that have sponsored me (which you can do by going to raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c (yes, I’m shameless)) that I would blog my endeavors in training, because it was sure to be hilarious, bearing in mind that I am very lazy, and I really hate running.
I’ve been describing my running style to people as being like Phoebe from Friends. Observe:

OK, so I don’t run that fast (I’d be dead by the end of the road) but the flailing, yep, I do that.

So I’ve been training now reasonably regularly (probably not as much as I should, but apparently I have a social life. And also I’m lazy) and yet I still don’t seem to be able to run for more than 10 minutes before dying because my back is going into spasms. (My original spelling was “spazums”, which makes much more sense)

Its not too long until the race, and I’m half looking forward to it, and half not. I mean, yay, I get to take part and help raise money for one of my favourite charities, but boo, RUNNING HURTS.

You still have time to sponsor me, I know I keep saying it, but please please do! I’m half way to my target of £250, and I’d love to reach that target by the race day. Head over to raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c if you have a few pennies to spare.

So my second week of training for the Race for Life has been non existant – I managed to catch Louise’s lurgy last weekend and have been feeling very sorry for myself! Hopefully with the clocks changing today, I will be more likely to go running after work, because it will be lighter longer.

My running pack arrived this week though, which is pretty quick. My number thing is lower than I thought – I would have expected more people to have signed up by now! The pink sheet is the back sign, which you need to decorate with the reason why you are doing the Race for Life. I want to make mine look awesome this year, but I can’t think what to do!

Sponsorship wise, I’m really pleased because I’m almost half way to my target! If you’ve not sponsored me yet, you can by going to raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c