40 day streak to 40

So its 2012 already.  And, of course, I've missed my first planned race of the year.  It wasn't entirely my fault but the end result was that I didn't make it to the startline of the Dungarvan 10 last week. So the Ballycotton 10 will now become my first race.

This is the year that I'll officially become a veteran.  Some may say 'old', others would say just 'older than last year'.  Either way 40 seems like an age that should be 'marked' in a special way.  If I was 10 years older I would have been 40 during the height of the Celtic Tiger era so I'd probably have bought a sportscar or 3 villas in the south of France.  But, alas it is not 2002 and the world is a different place.  So I decided to mark the midlife-40 in a more modest way and go for a run.  More dedicated runners manage to run their age in miles on their birthday but as I've not been that dedciated lately I thought that a more realistic, benefical and possibly difficult challenage would be to run for 40 days in a row.

In fact, I set myself 2 main targets for these 40 days:

1. To run every day for 40 days; and,
2. To run at least 40 miles per week.

There are also some secondary targets, in case the wheels fall off, but I'm not thinking about these at present....

So far, I'm on Day 20/40 and my streak is still going.  Last week there were a few time-poor days which meant that I could only fit in my runs late at night.  In general, my runs are 5-6 miles and I've been trying to put in 1 or 2 'longer' runs per week.  The nett effect is that my pace has increased and my average heartrate has come down significantly, nearly 20bpm at an easy pace, and I'm feeling a lot fitter than a month ago.  This can only be good for the future!

So, I'm half way there and in 20 days time I'll not only be officially 'old' in the eyes of the 'younger' generation but I'll also be able to evaluate how the rest of 2012 can go...

I'll summarise how it went at the end but for now all the details are on Dailymile.com