Opening my account

The Vitality Running World Cup 2020 is now upon us. It actually started yesterday, but as that was a rest day, I had to wait until today to start my contribution to the Healthunlocked Team tally.

It was one of those runs that almost didn't happen. The event may be sponsored by Vitality, but I certainly wasn't feeling any initially. First it was a case of, I'll head out mid-morning, then it was before lunch, then it was after lunch and before I knew it, it was 2pm and I still hadn't got anywhere and was in danger of putting it off until tomorrow, so I decided to bite the bullet and get on with it.

I figured that all I really needed to do was complete the qualifying 3k in 30 minutes and if I still wasn't feeling it, I could essentially call it "job done" for the day; there would always be other runs.

As is often the case, once I'm actually out and my legs have found their rhythm, things just click into place and by the time I'd passed the 3k mark, I was in my groove and just kept on going.

I've been meaning to try out the route that I took today for a couple of weeks, but on account of the heavy rains we've had yesterday, sections of it have been a bit too churned up for running on, so today was my first opportunity to try it out. About half of it will make up the second half of the Winton 10k Trail run that I will be doing at the end of the month; the rest of it are all bits that I've run before, I just hadn't put them all together in this way to make a 10k route. In the end, 1:06:41 was a pretty respectable time considering there was a reasonable chance of it never happening at all at one point and brings my weekly total to a bit over 37.5k.

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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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