Marathon Weekend, Marathon post

Literally a Marathon weekend for some of course , like my brother…. 3 hours and 34 mins, that’s 8 mins per mile…with an *injury*!! My goodness… I’d be hard pressed to run for a bus with a foot injury, and as for the other 26 miles, yes I know my arm is being severely twisted to do the Race for Life later on in the year, maybe I could just about manage 5km, but a marathon has my complete admiration, I just can’t imagine it,…nope I just tried again and I can’t…!
Lil’Bro ( or Simon as he shall be known) has asthma, as a child it was bad, my dad’s comment was that there had been nights that they wondered if he would make it through – he’s now about the fittest person I know, – still asthmatic, still takes the drugs, but he hasn’t let it stop him. He’s raised about £4K too!
My marathon was a bit different – driving, about 500 miles over the course of a long weekend, I took the children up to visit friends of ours, John & May and their children Dave & Tom for a few days – we’re on school holiday at the moment, and Mr FF is working in the US, so it made sense to be away from home,J is a vicar, so in addition to the 200 mile distance they all tend to be pretty busy at the weekends, so it was great to get an opportunity to see them.
On Friday I spent the day shadowing him -really good day, lots of good conversations and insights, and no, in answer to the question that everyone kept asking, I wasn’t put off!

Saturday everyone chilled out for the morning, the dog ate all the lunch designated muffins so I had to send Dave & Ruthy to get more, then we had a spontaneous visit from S&S and their children, S (the male one) is an old friend of all of ours too, He & I flat shared years ago and our living room was the scene of many hours of Sunday night Nintendo-ing when we were all youngsters and Mr FF was just the boyfriend! Mr FF was missed as the nintendo of old was replaced by a PS2 and the battles recommenced 🙂 Ruthy’s comment on an old version of Worms was “the animation’s a bit rubbish isn’t it” kuh! youth of today – they don’t know they’re born – some of us even remember playing Pong. After a walk & a play in Sherwood Forest with our combined nine children ( yes I know nearly half of them are mine, so??) we had supper all together before S&S went home, it was a lovely afternoon 🙂

On Sunday , all four of mine went happily and stayed happily in their various groups in church – now given that that is a feat even at home, I was pretty pleased, it was so nice to sit uninterrupted for a whole service. I got to go in the evening too ( M seemed to be holding an informal under 12s crèche in the vicarage!!) A Sunday night curry was the order of the day after that, yummy!

On Monday Dave & Tom were back to school, I packed up and my four sort of helped, after a quick lunch we were off, but I hadn’t banked on it taking 55 mins to do the 15 min journey to the motorway!!! After that the traffic was on the heavy side but not delaying, and we finally arrived at my parents house around 5.30. I left the children there for a couple of days, did another 100 miles and am home alone trying to get some work done!