Sunday, September 8, 2019

Annual update - Autumn 2019

Has is really been over 12 months since I last posted about my latest attempts to restart a running habit??  Wow - time flies!  In my defence it has been a very busy year - just not on the running front for me!

However, my children's sporting careers have gone from strength to strength with one of them even getting to compete for Ireland in Wales last July.  So I've spent a lot of time at the track (waiting for training to end) but I really should use that time more productively!


The summer months and my expanding waistline have spurned me on to getting my own act in gear again.  So since the end of July I've managed to run every week and twice most weeks.  Not much but its a start..

I feel like I should be on a couch-to-5K programme.  But the programme I've adopted isn't that dissimilar.  Each run is easy, with the focus being on covering the distance and plenty of recovery between runs. 

In the beginning I wasn't too concerned about the number of walking breaks that I needed to take but from this week I'm trying to minimise the number of breaks (when I started I couldn't get past the 1 mile mark without a break).  Runs have been a minimum of 4 miles at an easy pace - just under 9 min / mile pace and on grass at the UCC Farm - avoiding hills and hopefully the risk of calf injury..

Today was a bit of a breakthrough day - so that's why I decided to write this brief post.

I got to the 3 mile mark at 8:20min/ml pace and without a break!  I think it's been over 2 years since I last managed that.  I also finished my run with only 2 walking breaks (@3 miles and @4 miles).  It seems like there's a base building.



Let's wait and see where it leads but there are green shouts of a running habit reforming..

All I need do now is to introduce 1-2 more runs per week and hopefully the gains will continue.