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| My first ever race! |
One full month into my 10-month, 10-mile challenge and I'm a bit in love with running. It becomes an addiction. Got to go further. Got to go faster. Got to have more running kit!
Having only started running in the middle of June this year, September saw me reach a few of my running milestones.
- 1st September 2014 - Joined Team Challenge 10
- 10th September 2014 - Ran 10k for the first time (1 hour 18)
- 14th September 2014 - Ran my first 5k race (clocked a 35:53 time on a VERY hilly trail race)
- 21st September 2014 - Ran my first 3k race (18:33 cross-country fun-run)
September also saw me join a running group to try and improve my speed and technique. I've started attending a weekly running course called Lady Bees which is run by an awesome lady named Karen who runs Elite Conditioning and really knows how to push you to use that spare 5% that you naturally hold back when you run. The weekly, one-hour sessions teach drills and training routines for pushing your own boundaries and trying to up that speed. As an example, this week we ran 10 one minute sprints with one minutes rest in between them. It hurt.
Tonight I went for my regular Thursday evening tempo run and my legs and lungs still hurt, two days later! But here's the thing. Tonight I ran what felt like a hard, long, slow 5k and yet when I look at all my Garmin stats, its really obvious that my ploddy runs now are the equivalent of my speedy runs back in August. When I really really pushed last week, I broke the 32 minute mark for a 5k run and I think, given the right conditions, I could get it below 31 minutes.
Forthcoming Milestones
My next big milestone may be the sub 30-minute 5k and I might even try for it during half-term at the end of October.
In November I have my first 10k race booked for Swindon. With a couple more muddy off-road 10k races booked for December. I must be crazy. Who really wants to run on the 28th December???
Every week I add another 1k to my long run and I'm steadily moving up towards that 10 mile mark but I'd like to concentrate on improving my speed over a longer distance. At present my long runs still feel like walking with a bounce!
I've also done a mildly bonkers thing. I've booked myself onto the Reading Half Marathon in March next year. By then, I'm hoping that I can meet the 10 mile #TeamChallenge10 goal so what's an extra few miles when you're surrounded by thousands of other people???
