It's Good to be Back!

Oh how good it feels to be back! I had a great time in London; and as promised, I will be updating you on how it went.
Here is my first post :)

Lost in London – 10/02/12

I'm genuinely the most directionally challenged person ever - it was my first run in London today and I managed to get lost (surprise, surprise!) Tragically, this was after creating my route online and studying it pretty carefully.

My run started of pretty good; there’s something about going for a run in a new location that makes it more exciting. It’s the novelty of it all… It makes a run a little more interesting.

Before I knew it, I ended up running up an incline. I remember thinking “this is weird...my planned route doesn't contain a hill...” and that’s when it dawned on me: I was lost. Typical me! At first, I felt a little like this guy:

But  then I realised that I might aswell stay calm. It wasn’t dark, the weather was on my side and the streets weren’t deserted or anything (in fact, after my 4^th time panting “Excuse me, please” I observed that the streets were a little too crowded for my liking…) So I told myself to just enjoy the experience of running into the unknown.

After a while, my legs began to ache, the music on my mp3 player was beginning to annoy me, the sights were no longer exciting and I just wanted to get back. This prompted me to ask a few people for directions and I managed to make my way back.

So overall, it was quite an enjoyable run. I think I ran roughly 3 miles. Will I study my route more thoroughly next time? Yes. Will it make a difference? Probably not. ;)

M x

See you in Two Weeks

Hey Everyone,
I'm visting family at the moment and won't be able to post for two weeks.
But, I will be documenting my progress and will blog everything when I'm back home.
See you then :)
M x

By the End of my Gap Year...

I’ve (finally) come up with a list of goals I’d like to achieve before the end of my gap year. Hopefully, coming up with some goals will help me to stay focused as well as giving me something to work towards. Here they are:

1. Run a half-marathon - having recently completed a 10K race, I figured this would be the next logical step.

2. Run for charity – Doing a race is a perfect opportunity to raise money for charity. I haven’t actually decided which charity I will be running for yet as there are a few I’m quite passionate about.

3. Run in another country – I’m thinking of going to Germany in April and I’d love to take part in a race whilst I’m there

I would love to run along the beautiful Rhine

4. Take part in park runs – so I’ve been hearing about these park runs for a while now; and they’ve just started them in a park 5 minutes away from where I live. Now, I have no excuse not to take part…

5. Run in Hyde Park – I've heard it's a beautiful park and I have family living in London; so I'd like to go for a run there when I visit them :)

6. Improve on my Nutrition (by this, I mainly mean: eat less chocolate.) These are my two weaknesses:

I have one of these chocolate bars (sometimes both) on most days, so it's definitely going to be a challenge to eat less chocolate as I'm definitely a chocoholic :D

7. Improve on my PB for a 10K - My fastest time for a 10K run is around 57 minutes; ideally I'd like to run it in 50 minutes.

8. Run in fancy dress (I’ll probably combine this with goal number 2)

a possible costume idea... :)

9. Run 5K in under 25 minutes - My current PB is 28:02; but when it comes to attempting this goal, I'll probably choose a less hilly route...

10. To join a running club - I love running on my own but joining a club would be a great way to meet other runnners, get advice from them and of course at times there will be an element of competition too ;)

And finally...

11. To run a marathon!! It's something I've always said I wanted to do in life. So why not go for it during my gap year? I'm going to try and get a few races under my belt before I begin training. I know it's going to be an immense challenge, but I'm ready for it!

So these are my goals. I might add a few more as the year goes on. I'm excited to see how I progress as a runner during my gap year.

First Run Back

My first run back began a little later than I anticipated as I haven’t been feeling well these past few days, but I’m much better now :)

So anyway, I finally decided to go for a run. The last time I went running was probably just over a week after the Saltwell 10K; it was Boxing Day I think.

As a runner, you’re bound to have good runs and bad runs. Unfortunately, today wasn’t my best run.  Why? A lot of reasons, I guess: I haven’t been running in while, I've been eating a little too much chocolate during revision etc.

I planned a challenging 5K route for my run – it was pretty hilly. Word of advice everyone…. Do NOT plan a challenging route immediately after taking a break from running. Let’s just say I learned my lesson today when I could hardly breathe after my run. I’ve decided to take it easy with my next few runs. I’ll probably try the challenging 5K route again next week to see whether I can improve on my time.

My time was 30:49 – definitely not my best. I was pretty disappointed as I was hoping for a sub 30 time. But I figured that if I’m going to improve as a runner, I’ll have to start looking at positives. I fear that if I’m too critical of myself, I’ll start to lose my enjoyment of running (and I really don’t want that to happen!)

So what were the positives about my run today? I didn’t stop; especially on the hills (believe me, I was tempted to stop…) But I kept going! That’s the mentality I’m going to need if I want to achieve my gap year running goals.


Speaking of goals... I still need to finish my list. I'll be posting it soon :)

Time to get running

Today was the day of my last exam :) Revision took up pretty much all of my time, so I haven’t been running in a while. I get the feeling that my next run is going to be quite challenging (let’s just say I consumed a lot of cookies during revision…)

But I’m excited to take up running again. I ran my first ever race last month – the Saltwell 10K road race; it was absolutely freezing that day and the course was pretty hilly, but I loved (almost) every minute of it.

Saltwell 10k Road Race 17/12/11

I definitely want to take part in a lot of races this year. I’m thinking that it might be a good idea to set some running goals for my gap year. I’ll include those in my next post; as well as an update on how my first run back goes.

M x