Susie's Training Diary

Susie Hewer will be 50 years old this year and to mark the event she has decided to run a marathon. More accurately, she will be running 6 long distance events (one for each decade), 4 of which are 26.2 miles, the others are 35 and 52.4 miles respectively.

Susie has been knitting ever since she can remember but only took up running 5 years ago. She enjoyed it so much she just carried on and has since run 4 marathons, with many more to come.

In 2007, she will be raising money for the Alzheimer's Research Trust in memory of her mum, who suffered from vascular dementia.

One of the marathons Susie will be running is the London Marathon in April 2007. As she has already run it twice she was trying to think of how to make it a bit more of a challenge. A friend told her she was mad and why didn't she just stay at home and knit. That was when Susie came up with the idea of "extreme knitting" her way around. A great way of combining two of her favourite pastimes!

Susie will be keeping us regularly informed of her training progress in her Training Diary below

Donation can be made at www.justgiving.com/extremeredhead

Training Diary #4

The Draycote 35 Mile Ultra Marathon

Hoorah, that's 35 miles done and dusted in 7 hours, 36 minutes 40 seconds and I ran all the way except for brief stops at the feed station. If you'd told me 5 years ago when I first started running that I'd run for that length of time one day I would have laughed out loud!

How was it? Well, it was tough, fun, demanding, exhilarating and a massive effort all rolled into one day. As it was my first venture over 26.2 miles it was a bit of an unknown entity. I got my pacing just right up to the 20 mile mark which I passed in bang on 4 hours. About 2 miles later I had a bit of a bad spell and slowed right down for a few miles. It's times like that you need to dig deep and use your mental stamina and after a bit of a cry and an encouraging phone call from my hubby I managed to get myself back on track. Part of the course was quite undulating and those slight undulations felt like mountains in the last few miles! Amazingly, I managed to run up all the hills, even when I was really tired towards the end.

It was a fantastic feeling of achievement when I crossed the finish line and I got a bright yellow tee shirt as a memento (which I refuse to take off!)

I learned some important lessons from the experience:

- An ultra marathon is not like an ordinary marathon of 26.2 miles with extra miles tacked on the end - it is a whole different ball game and requires a very different approach. When I do the Kent 50 mile Challenge in July I will have to run for another 17.4 miles on top of what I ran at Draycote. I think I've got some serious training to do!!!!!

- I need to do some strengthening work on my neck and shoulders as they were incredibly stiff and sore at the end. Also, my arms ached terribly from being held in position for so long. This will be really important in the London Marathon when I'm knitting at the same time. I've still got to work out how to stash the knitting as it grows and where to keep my supply of yarn. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

There was an article about my mum in Woman's Weekly a couple of weeks ago. It was entitled 'Marvellous Mum' and was about the good things I remember about her and how she encouraged my interest in crafts, especially knitting and crochet. When I was a child she made me the most gorgeous knitted cardigans with intricate fair isle patterns and she was much more accomplished than I am. I've got loads of crochet mats and tablecloths that she made years ago which still look amazing now.

My fund-raising is going well and the total is close to the £600 mark. I'm hoping many more people will make their donations now the London marathon is drawing near. I can't wait to run it as its going to be such fun watching people's faces as they see me running whilst knitting. The Knit Out at the finish will be great fun!

Happy knitting to everyone. Remember, every garment begins with one stitch.

Susie

Training Diary #3

What a start to the year - gale-force winds, storm damage all over the place then rain, rain and more rain. The opportunities to get out there and do any knitting whilst running have been scarce I can tell you! For many days I've had to resort to treadmill running in order to keep up with my schedule. It's OK occasionally but gets really boring even with the radio to keep me company.

Anyway, the knitting pins I've decided I like best for the job are 9mm wooden ones. I tried some enormous lightweight plastic ones as I thought that would work in their favour but I really prefer the heavier weight of the smaller wooden pins. The yarn will be decided upon nearer the time but I think it should be a mixture of bright colours so it shows up.

The exciting news this month is that the Cast Off knitting group may be holding a 'knit-in' at the finish of the London Marathon to welcome me across the finish line! I'd emailed their founder, Rachael Matthews, told her what I'm doing and asked if she'd like to get involved. I had a lovely email back saying that she'd love to help and suggested that they could knit me a silver blanket to put round my shoulders when I stagger across the finish line. Great stuff. I thought they could all wear lovely purple tee shirts from the Alzheimer's Research Trust as it would be a great publicity stunt which would be good for knitting as well.

Susie

Susie completed the Draycote 35 mile ultra marathon on the 18th February. She will be telling us how she got on in the next issue of knitonthenet in March.

Training Diary #2

My marathon training is going well. I'm just hoping that I manage to remain injury-free as that's the hardest part when you're running such high mileages - I'm covering between 40 and 50 miles each week. I am devoting one run a week to knitting so that I gain in confidence. The thing is, running a marathon is a tough challenge anyway without the added complication of knitting whilst doing it, so it's really important to have practised well beforehand.

I went to see all the lovely ladies at Laughing Hens a few weeks ago and they gave me some chunky circular needles to try out. They are 5.5mm and really lightweight so I thought they'd be just right. Wrong! I really can't get on with them at all as I don't seem to be able to direct the points as easily as with straight pins. I actually think they're too light, believe it or not. At the moment I'm experimenting with smaller, 4.5 mm straight metal pins and I'm coping quite well - I managed 4 miles knitting whilst running last week and didn't drop any stitches. I probably wouldn't win any prizes for my tension though!

It was suggested that I try knitting in the dark to stop me looking down at my work and that has really helped me work much more by feel.

I was photographed for a knitting magazine recently and usually I wear a gilet with pockets in the back which is really handy for stashing my wool, but I wanted to show off my Alzheimer's Research Trust tee shirt so I had to stick the ball down the back of my leggings! It gave a whole new meaning to the question "does my bum look big in this?"

My fund-raising is going quite well as I asked everyone to make a donation to my web-page rather than buying me presents. The big push starts in the New Year once everyone has recovered from Christmas.

Happy New Year to knitters everywhere.

Susie

Training Diary #1

OK, as I've now committed to running the London marathon whilst knitting a scarf (well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!) I thought I'd better try it out. Perhaps Tuesday wasn't the ideal day as it was very windy and I soon gave up and stashed my needles and yarn in our letterbox at the end of the drive. Hmmmm. A couple of things occurred to me straight away - I will need something to carry the wool in (maybe a pouch behind) and once the scarf starts to grow it will become heavy so will need to be supported at the front. Could I have some sort of sling hung around my neck? I'm used to wearing a belt to carry a drink, car keys etc so I'm not really worried about having something across my back. I really need to start working at this.

I got a really helpful email from Just call me Ruby who suggested that I try circular needles so I don't need to worry which row I'm on so I'm alternating between circular and straight pins to see which works best. Because its all new to me I'm finding that I keep looking at my knitting instead of watching where I'm going so I may need to work on that!!! If anyone has any suggestions on how best to carry my knitting en-route then please let me know.

Anyway, last week was the official start of my training for the first race; the Draycote 35 mile ultra marathon in February. My total for the week was 50 miles which included a 10 miler on Saturday and a 20 miler on Sunday. This next week will be a bit easier (well, 40 miles!) to give my legs a bit of a rest. I run really slowly so it takes ages to do it and I have to get up and out early so my training doesn't interfere with the day too much. I worked out I'd been running for 10 hours last week! I'm just hoping that the weather improves as not only did I get soaked on each run, I nearly got blown away by the gale-force winds. Not fun.

Happy knitting to you all!

Susie

I have set up a secure web-page for donations at www.justgiving.com/extremeredhead so please dig deep and sponsor me to help find a cure for this devastating disease.