Bringing up the 500...

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, reputedly once said: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". Well, today, at my twelfth park run, I passed the 500 mile mark for 2019. It's 500 miles that includes:

1 x half marathon
3 x 10 miles
17 x 10k
57 x 5k
numerous other shorter runs.

While I may only have reached half of Lao Tzu's 1,000 miles, the principle still remains the same, it all began with me choosing to take that first step when I embarked on Couch to 5k at the start of the year.

Being a bit of a stat fanatic, for me it's been fascinating watching the distances covered and the time spent running increase as the year has progressed; from running my first 5k in June, all the way up to my first (and to date, only) Half Marathon in November and all the landmarks in between such as:

My first Parkrun
The Edinburgh Race For Life
My first 10k
My first sub-30 minute 5k
My first 10 miles
The Edinburgh Men's 10k

None of these even crossed my mind as being possible when I laced up mt running shoes back in March and restarted the plan; I genuinely would have been happy to have known that I was going to get to the point of being able to run for 30 minutes.

There is still at least one more running day left in 2019, so hopefully I will break the 100k for the month for the third time before December ends.

In the mean time, I wish anyone reading this health and happiness and many more miles in 2020.

Comments

So, this happened...

Back at the start of March, after an 8 month lay-off, I picked up where I left off on week 2 and restarted my Couch to 5k journey. I completed the plan on 7 May, running 5k in a time of 39:21. Today, just shy of 4 months later, I ran 10k non-stop for the first time in my life with a time of 1:19:36. It hadn't been my intention to run that far tonight; I wasn't due to make my first attempt at the distance until next week. Tonight I was aiming for 8.5-9k but it just felt right and I kept going and, well, the result is what it is... Feeling dead chuffed with my achievement, but I need to thank everyone on the forum for their encouragement and support at all points along this journey and (I'm sure) for the continued encouragement on what is still to come. I'm off to give my poor legs a well earned rub down...

One run, two more PBs

It's been that kind of week. At the start of the year I set myself the following goals for 2020: See how much lower I could take my 5k PB below 28:38 Get my 10k PB below one hour from 1:03:49 Get my 10 mile PB below 1:45:00 from 1:49:29 Get my Half Marathon PB below 2:30:00 from 2:30:23 I haven't really been doing anything specific towards reducing them, although on Monday , I did a sprint interval session and brought my 5k time down to 28:04. I was meant to be running the Edinburgh Kilomathon tomorrow, which is a 13.1k run through the city, stating at Ocean Terminal and ending in Murrayfield Stadium. Alas, due to CORVID-19, this event, like so many others is currently on hold. Since I wasn't going to be able to do that run, I decided to do my own thing today. Rather than run 13.1k, I decided to push on and go for 13.1 miles. The result; two more of my goals achieved. My 10 mile PB now stands at 1:44:54, and my Half Marathon PB is down to 2:21:21. My 10k PB...

Two years ago, having finally shaken of the tendonitis that had put paid to my first attempt at the Couch to 5k plan, I finally put all the excuses behind me, laced up my shoes that had been gathering dust since I unboxed them at Christmas, and started my running journey in earnest. There were a couple of "training runs" along the way, but I completed the programme in May 2019 and quickly moved on to JuJu's 10k plan which got me to 10k on 1 July that year. Before 2019 was finished, I'd get to 10 miles in October and my first HM in November and, by the time the bells rang in 2020, I'd clocked up over 500 miles. Then, 2020... Well, actually, from a running perspective, it turned out better than anticipated. Yes, OK, so the final parkrun was a year ago this weekend just past, and all the organised events I'd entered were cancelled or postponed until some indeterminate point in the future, but running, it seemed, was an escape and helped my cope with the whole...

Finding My Inner Runner

Search This Blog