Marathon Effort

Did you watch the London Marathon over the weekend?  I managed to tune in for a while, before Squeaky demanded her programmes back on.  I couldn't contemplate running that kind of distance - I'm the sort of girl who can't deal with running for a bus, never mind anything else.  And I'm in the middle of my own marathon of sorts right now, the World Snooker Championships.  17 days of high intensity television watching while nice young men hit balls around a table in Sheffield.

Squeaky Daddy's big ambition is to run the London Marathon one day.  He's tried to get a place for the last few years, but "standard" entry places are like gold dust - it's a lot of work to raise the sort of money needed for a charity place.  It's a fantastic ambition, and I'd be really proud of him if he achieved it.  I know I couldn't do it myself.

There's a little part of me that would like to run, but I actually don't know how to start - I was never that sporty at school, our school didn't do swimming, which was always my thing.  Between that & cycling, I've got two-thirds of a triathlon, it's just the running I couldn't manage.  I watched an Iron Man Triathlon on holiday a couple of years back - it was all I could do in the blazing Spanish sunshine to walk to the beach bar for an ice-cream, never mind the kind of endurance they showed.  Really inspiring.

Triathletes in Majorca

Believe it or not though, a marathon's nothing to our pre-school wonderkids!  Pound for pound, sized up to adults, they run the equivalent of 30 miles a day!  All that careering around being a dog, a horse, a ballet dancer, playing hide & seek and general mischief making all adds up to a mammoth amount of exercise for those little legs.  Or if the marathon's not your thing, their daily exercise is equal to 6 hours of rowing (more than enough to get across the channel), or 250 minutes of boxing - which is enough for 83 rounds!

So it's really important to me that Squeaky gets the right balance of nutrition to keep her fit for those miles of running.  Even scaled up, with much longer legs, I can barely keep up with her some days.  I've mentioned before that we've had issues with Squeaky's food, she's a very picky eater.  We're making some changes at home at the moment, cutting out the snacks and trying to introduce a bit more variety into her meals, but it's very difficult - especially when you're out.  Which is worse, a child who only eats the Yorkshire pudding and ice cream of a Sunday Lunch, or the child who is screaming and having a tantrum because there's a pea on their plate?  We've got a way to go still, so I'm glad to have Growing Up Milk on my side to help me get the balance right.

Now, my child's asleep, worn out after her marathon day, and I'm back to the telly to continue my marathon.  There's still 11 days to go until we know who the 2013 World Champion will be!  I'm missing being there, I haven't been to Sheffield to watch the snooker since before Squeaky was born.  When she's a little bit older, maybe.