I'm still plodding on intermittently. Lots of guilt about having the time and energy to get out and run. A typical week has involved cramming in a run before dashing off to take my younger child to his mid-morning swimming lesson on a Sunday. Circuits on a Saturday. Very little mid-week when cramming in work and a young family is more than enough to send me to an early night. Unfortunately work is one of those jobs that follows me home and has to be picked up after the children are in bed or early the next day.
I have fitted some runs in, mainly around the 5k mark. Mostly involving the muddy countryside on the edge of my neighbourhood. Not fast, but fun. The weather has improved since my last update with more sunshine. It's still been a muddy, slippery winter on the local clay soil. I'm still in the anything counts mentality.
At half term I managed to make the most of some glorious sunshine on a rather bracing day and head out for a lovely long cross country run/walk. I'm finding getting out great for headspace at present.
I have plans. A repeat of the local 10k for April and a 3rd go at the 8.5 mile fun run in June. I've conned my husband in... Further ahead, a group of us are hoping to do an obstacle race in September but booking isn't open yet on that.
I remember last year feeling a bit stressy that I hadn't really trained for the 10k. I'd like to be just under 55 mins. Squeezing in some speed work between now and then would be beneficial, but I feel happy that I can maintain an hour at a sensible pace. The critical thing is that the race now has a medal at the end of it. It was slightly dispiriting at the end of last year's with only the t-shirt collected in advance to show for it. I find t-shirts OK as a warm up layer, but they tend to be too baggy to be comfortable to wear directly.
Last night I had a companion... my 5 year old. He'd got some new trainers and decided to hijack my run. He managed nearly 45 mins of running and walking intervals. I used wk1 of the C25k podcasts to pace him which suited his natural rhythm. When that ended as we got near home, he said that was his warm up and insisted of a lap of the local woods. Over 3.3k was covered in total. Once I got him back home, I went back out for something longer and more sustained in pace. It was now dark so I stayed local and did about 4km concentrating on 6 min kms. Well apart from up the long hill, but I kept that at about 6:30 min kms which is pleasing after my erratic run.
I'm now looking forwards to Easter when I can do some longer runs. The evenings/ mornings will be lighter which will tempt me out more. It's getting there now. It's just that dratted work stuff interrupting!
