Different approach, with inspiring results.

5 minutes of running, followed by a minute of walking – 6 times.

Made for further overall distance covered, and strangely the average pace wasn’t that much more shabby than it normally is with no stopping over half the distance.

The new way forward perhaps?

Covered 3.3 miles (including the walks) and was out and about for 35 minutes, much better than normal…. nice.

PS – I have been running in between this and the last post, but it was a bit crappy and no progression so I didn’t post it. That trend is set to continue…. next one at 4 miles I’d suspect.

18 minutes 7 seconds.

Average pace of just over 10mm for the duration.

No walking. Strangely, after about 1.25 miles it felt like I hadn’t done anything, breathing was ok, legs felt fine…. that sensation didn’t last long, but it was nice while it did.

Today was VERY cold. I went out in shorts and a t shirt, regretted that by the bottom of my road, but thought sod it – training for a mudder here, man up you spod. What a hard bastard

Further realisation today. I’m probably not going to update this site after EVERY run any more. Originally I was only doing it so I didn’t sack it off. I’m not going to be sacking it off – I actually look forward to it now – here’s a crazy realisation: Running is fun! Hard, but rewarding, and ultimately fun.

So expect the next bit of running news when I reach some kind of benchmark… probably 2 miles without stopping…. See you later!

So in a bid to improve at being great at running, and thus reduce my inability to be mint at running today I decided to run until I couldn’t run any more.

No more of this pussying out after “just over a mile” for me…. NO!

And I got considerably further than I thought I would! 17 minutes and 5 seconds, covering 1.7 miles. um, Boom.

So herein lies the new and improved plan:

I will run at least ONE MINUTE further every time… this should lead to about 12 minutes further per month, which will be (unless something goes horribly wrong) at least a mile further per month – which works into the other plan from the other day.

Jackpot.

So, in all its ‘glory’ here’s todays non stop 1.7 miles

The sun isn’t going to get any cooler – and there’s almost zero chance I’m going to be getting up half an hour earlier in the mornings to do this, so the decidion was reached today just to get out there and crack on, regardless of whether it’s sunny or not.

It’s going to hurt, you’re going to be crap, but it’ll help in the long run… Those were the pearls of wisdom I was telling myself.

And I was right. It was like reverting back to square one again. Total lack of stamina, having multiple walk breaks… but I guess if I can crack it in the sun too then a) I’ll get a healthy tan for the summer for once and b) I’ll be that crazy guy that goes for a run when it’s stupid hot that everyone points at and laughs as they’re sat on the park bench eating ice creams in the shade.

Summary: First mile non stop in under 10 (not normally an achievement these days, but more difficult than it has felt recently). Second mile – hard work with a few short walks. However I did limit myself to only a minute walk after the first mile which didn’t make it any easier.

After yesterdays exploits involving running in the sun, figured I’d go for a short blast tonight to see if it had gotten any easier. Turns out it hasn’t.

Running in the sun, does not bring with good times. I reckon as the summer gets closer and the days get hotter it’s going to be a case of either running late doors or running very early doors. The clever money would go with late doors on that one!

Neither Amy or I were feeling particularly delicious when we got home so this was only ever going to be a quick once round the block type affair; 1.5 miles or thereabouts. Nine and a halfs for the first mile, brief walk, then another short bit of running pulling the average down to 10.08.

With regards to TM though…. been having a bit of a think on that one. The way I see it is I’m not really doing much by way of pushing myself at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still doing way more exercise these days than I have in the past 5 years, but it isn’t going to be enough to get super tough for the dirt fest in a year. Basic maths says:

I need to be able to run 12 miles.
I’ve got about 50 weeks to do it in.
I am currently doing 2.5 ish – and that includes walking at 1 mile for a minute or two.

So all in all I need to be pulling out an extra mile every 5 weeks.

Now I’m not talking every run – that would be absolutely ludicrous and would have me smashing out 1.5 marathons a week towards the end (and when I say end, I mean of this chapter, I definitely don’t anticipate just stopping after the mudder!! ) Just for one of the runs in the week, probably the one at the weekend.

With this in mind, I’ve set myself some targets. Bring it on.

But for now, todays results:

Run Twelve and we decided to take to the forest, try our hand (or more specifically feet) at a bit of cross-country.

With this I learned 3 things:

1) Running in the mid-day heat (even in March) is bad.
2) Running on uneven ground / through mud / trying to avoid tree roots is bad.
3) Running after smoking with your mates on Friday is bad.

As you can guess by my summary, today was not a record breaking feat of awesomeness – but it was still a work out and I suppose that’s all that really matters.

From having to avoid crazy roots, muddy puddles and various other anomalies that my legs aren’t used to my shins were properly feeling the burn after about the first 1.3 miles. This wasn’t helped by having to take evasive action not to chuck all of my 16 stone down on to the un-suspecting head of a random jack russell too… pesky thing.

Was a nice route though, meandering through a woods to be greeted by Tindale monument and views over the Severn at the far end.

Here’s a link to the route and stats – nothing to behold, but a run is a run and must be documented:

Today was cool.

Didn’t really have a specific goal in mind, so just set out running at a steady pace to see what would happen.

Managed to get the first mile down to 9.38 and where I would normally have decided that was prime time to have a walk I cracked on as far as I could. Managed to keep going for another half minute then figured it was definitely walk time. Got the breathing back down to normal than banged out another mile non-stop. Granted the pace was back below the 10mm mark, but none the less, normally I wouldn’t have been able to manage another full mile without walking.

More sign of improvement – happy days!

Number 10. As far as runs go, I’ve just hit double figures. Wallop.

Not entirely sure what to make of this one. Decided to give the big hill another go, but this time in reverse. What this basically entails is 3 miles, 1.5 going 300 feet up, the rest coming back down.

Overall time was 33 minutes; 11 minute miles on average. Not a great pace, but further than I normally run, and a LOT more hilly so not too bad I don’t think. The biggest boon was the pace on the final mile was 10.23mm – legs feeling like jelly but cracked on.

Today was cool!!

Absolutely properly couldn’t be arsed with it when I got home, but after eating 3 minature Yorkie at work today (they came complimentary with the coffee so I had to, honest!) I felt it was probably necessary.

But – RESULT!

The idea was to try and run 10 minutes, walk for 2, run 5, walk 1, run for 5… without worrying about pace, just trying to build a bit of stamina.
I managed all of the above with the minor exception that I had a 2 minute walk in between the 5s, rather than 1 – but I let myself off of that because 9 minutes and 55 seconds into the initial 10 minutes I passed the mile marker – hooray. A sub 10 minute mile without stopping.
The pace dropped off a bit after that, but I’m still pleased with how I’m progressing. My pace over 2.22 miles today was better overall than any of the 2 mile plus runs I’ve done so far.

TLDR: I’m getting better.

Today shouldn’t really have been a running day, but I drove for 7 hours to the other office and back through rubbish weather and even rubbisher traffic and by the time I got home I was very angry at it – so figured I’d go for a quick power run to try and chill out. It worked, sweet

So anyway – this one can be pretty much discounted, but figured I’d upload it anyway just for history’s sake.

Less than a mile, but I only ever intended to go from home to the Mrs’ work to meet her. Decent pace for me though, and I actually really wanted to as I was getting closer to home so that must mean something.

**Oh!! – and found out today that the dude from our other office said this is the only blog he ever reads, so the picture at the top is for him. Hey Greg… reckon you could cable manage that bad boy