I am just not long in from my run. I can’t say that I was totally in the mood to go this morning, I haven’t been out since Sunday. I know that’s only two days off pounding the coastal path, but I am only in my third week of training and at this tentative stage, mornings spent watching television in my pyjamas and reading library books and magazines are not a so distant memory. This morning the temptation was there to do just that; but after a bit of persuading from The Toad undergoing Training (fiancé TuT) via msn messenger, I was out the door.
I only intended to do 4km. I am training for the 5km Race For Life. My race takes place on 20th July, so at this stage I still have a good couple of months to train, the main thing at this point is that I am running four times a week, no matter what the distance or time. I am lucky that last year TuT treated me to a Garmin GPS training watch, so I know exactly how many kilometres I have run. Today when I hit 2km, the point where I was going to turn around and come back, I thought I’d carry on for the other 0.5km, that on completion of the run would mean I’d done 5km instead of 4km. I did 5km on Sunday and I was feeling ok at 2km, so I carried on to 2.5km and then turned around and ran back.
There I was approaching the 5km mark, Kasabian’s ‘Club Foot’ was beating through my veins via my ipod – “…you’re messin’ with the enemy” I sneered along as I summoned my body to a sprint finish. At which point a crazy red coated old lady with matching pillar box red lip stick moved out of my way, but as I ran past she touched my arm in the way that only the older generation ladies can and said:
“Good luck darling!”
I’d hit my 5km, but after the words of encouragement and kindness I felt I owed it to her to keep going. So I ran the last bit to the road crossing and then stopped my watch having done a little over the 5km I intended to.
I felt brilliant walking back home and wasn’t even disappointed when I plugged the Garmin training watch into the computer to see that I was slightly slower on average than my run on Sunday and didn’t hit my top speed. I was just glad I’d got back in the saddle after yesterday and was back on track with my running training.
I am quite proud of how quickly my running fitness is improving. I started out in February just running a mile – 1.6km, which I was able to jog all of, but I didn’t enjoy it and it was hard to keep a jogging pace up for the duration. Then a little over two weeks ago, just into March, I picked up a health and fitness magazine that came with a free water bottle (in pink as well!) and featured a beginners running programme. This programme means you run further in the beginning stages than just a mile, but you have walk breaks. This seems to be improving my running as it gives me the confidence to run further as you have the security of having walk breaks.
After a week and a half of following the run/walk programme I decided to tackle the distance of 5km to see how I managed it and I did it in just over 40minutes. I didn’t die of exhaustion and was pleased. Until the next day when I got out of bed and was stiff as a board! Walking hurt!
By the following Friday I tackled the 5km distance again, improved on my time and better than that, on the Saturday I didn’t suffer any stiffness in my legs, so on the Sunday, taking Saturday as a rest day, I went out and did 5km again.
So as the lady in red said – “Good Luck Darling!” – I just need to keep my training up and enjoy seeing myself improve.
Watch this space…..
