Not been about on here for a few weeks, life is busy, fortunately not too busy to run - though I've been grateful for the Treadmill over the last month! I have to say I have a an ambivalent relationship with it - it's so tedious, especially if you're doing a long run without pace changes - at the same time when the weather is just abysmal for running it's better than getting dizzy running round the house! And it has been - if you remember when we had the snow, and they then said "Coldest temperature of the year recorded..." well that was -13 at Shawbury, about 15-20 miles from here.... Add in the somewhat erratic working of the streetlights here (the council wait until about half of them aren't working before they fix them!) and you don't always want to risk being outdoors.
I'm part way through a programme to improve my 5K time at the moment - covering about 20k per week including a 10k long run and some fast (for me) intervals. It seems to be paying off as well - I did the Shrewsbury Parkrun on New Year's Day, and did 32:07 - the only time I've covered 5K faster was as part of a longer run and that section was completely flat or slightly downhill in the summer!
And then I get back home to encouragement from my two brothers - both of whom have been runners for a long time - to consider doing a Half-Marathon. At one point before I started running (about 6/7 years ago, before my Mum died) there was fanciful talk of all three of us doing the Great North Run - one year I even entered in the ballot but didn't get a place. However in the same series is the Birmingham HM, and it's open signups.... and middle brother is saying "I'm doing it, why don't you - it's October so there's plenty of time to train", the younger brother is in full-on Mrs Doyle mode ("Oh, go on, go on...."), and it has to be said I'm tempted.....
If anything the main reason not to is not that I can't do it - I know I can with sufficient training. The question I have is whether I have the time to do a long run every weekend that could be 2 hours or more (I reckon at current pace I'd be looking at 2:45 to finish) never mind the other training runs.... I have Friday as a day off so could look at doing the long run then, but how much other training would I need to put in round it? Any HM-ers like to recommend a plan so that I can get an idea of the commitment needed? It would be very easy to just stick with what I'm doing, but knowing myself I tend to need something to aim at - I'm just not sure if that should be HM, or doing local 10Ks!
week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
