Another month begins...

It's become a bit of a tradition; ever since I ran my first 10k back in July last year, I have tried to make my first run of the month a 10k (or longer). As I didn't run yesterday, it was a tradition that I carried on, once again, today, with a reasonably leisurely lollop around the village. I had intended to go a little further afield; taking advantage of the fact that I'm not at work this week, but in the end, due to having 101 other things that I needed to do, I simple stuck with what I knew.

The big advantage was quite simply that it early afternoon, instead of my usual after work run, and the paths were deserted. I encountered one other runner heading in the opposite direction to me as I joined the railway path, and a dog without its walker just as I was running down the hill back into the village, but other than that, there wasn't a soul (other than the wildlife) to be seen.

I do enjoy running in solitude. In just over a week it'll be the anniversary of me starting the Couch to 5k programme. As I started running further, and longer, I enjoyed watching nature come back to life after winter and the lengthening of the evenings as we headed towards the spring equinox. After all of the recent storms and bad weather, today actually felt somewhat springlike; helped I suspect, by running in the full glare of lunchtime rather than last rays of evening.

All my running this month is in preparation for the Winton 10k Trail on Saturday 28 March. It will be interesting to see what distance I accumulate between now and then...

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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

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