MILLY VOICE

Happy New Year!

It has been well over eight weeks since I busted my ankle and a new year has started! Since my last update, a few awesome adventures and things of note to share:

Going to Spain with some awesome girl mates (and Rob)
Ski touring
Running on Christmas Day!
Eating.

(Point four is not new, but a significant and wonderful feature of the holiday season. Definitely prominent.)

Early on in December I headed to Margalef (not Magaluf, as was reminded to me as far as even boarding the plane) where I went with Sam and Nikki (who recently launched TARC - definitely worth checking out), Andrea (badass triathlete), Meg (awesome trail runner and climber) Sophie (all round legend, trail runner, skier, general action woman) and Rob who takes some pretty neat action shots.

So quite the crowd and quite the laughs. No denying it was hard not to run on what I had originally foreseen as a ‘running holiday’, but a lot has to be said for long chats and laughs on a more technical hike (thanks Sophie) and dancing around the living room (thanks..everyone). Not to mention watching climbers attempt to send the local town walls. It was an adventure.

Coming back and getting the ‘go ahead’ to ski tour meant I could go outside. Get fresh air on my face on a mountain. Oh my life.

Now, I am by no means graceful ski touring yet, but I laugh a lot and have friends who are pretty natural at it to inspire me. Sophie Grant and husband George came with me for my debut outing this season and we finished with salty chips and a coke. I came back exhausted and happy.

Not too long after, I went out with Irne for round 2.

Ski tour with the awesome mountain girl Irne Mnguía

This lead on nicely to my first 5km attempt on Christmas Day.

It is fairly normal and expected to wake up on Christmas Day and enjoy the relaxation of festivities, food and relaxing.

Not being so normal, it was not long till I was out the door to run by the sea (before the rest of the usual traditions followed in full force). It felt SO good to be out, and back on my feet in this way.

Now I am slowly building up the running, I hope to tour more and get steadily stronger until my first event.

Which is a rather exciting one, and slightly different.

Pretty early in the season I will be around my homeland in East Sussex to race the Sussex Downs Endurance life 42km. For me, it is a chance to use this as an opportunity to see how the ankle fairs on a distance that I have built up slowly to before the season really begins for me.

More importantly, and the real reason for this adventure, is that it involves one of my best and longest friends. Devi and I met on the first day of our Bachelors Philosophy degree, and here we are not far off a decade later. She is one of the funniest, most caring people I know, as well as one of the strongest. Part of her strength is demonstrated through living with Multiple Sclerosis. She’s a champion and that strength needs to be celebrated, as well as raising further awareness to the charity that continually supports those who are taking on this challenge daily. So Devi is coming to make me laugh and cheer me on in my bonkers past times (nothing has changed), while I run some KM’s for a pretty awesome cause - and we exercise some girl power together because that’s just how our friendship works.

For anyone interested here is our JustGiving page.

This will be good training for the warmer seasons ahead which I am looking forward to greatly, with the intention of having started the year healing from a fracture, and working up towards racing 90km.