W8 R3 just finished

[Philip-r]

Well thats it Ive finished week and start my first week 9 run on Monday.

When I started the program I tried to keep to level ground, but over the last two runs I have started to enjoy (modest) hills. W8 R2 was a delightful evening run along a gradually rising country road, I didn't realise that there was a small group of Shetland ponies about 5 minutes from my house until then (my 6yo is going to love seeing them!) Isn't it great what you find when you are running around your local area ? My run today was 75% uphill, i'm quite suprised at myself. Ive got my eye on a really challenging hill that I am now determined to conquer in the near future.

Ive worked out a 15k run in the countryside around the town I live in, now how am I going to go from 5k to 15k ?!

[gary_bart]

To me that's one of the best parts of running. When we were little, we got chased out of the house early in the day, with instructions to be back by sunset, but not too soon before then. Out we went into the giant playground with the big blue roof, and out there we discovered all sorts of things going on. (I lived in a newly built town, so there were all the fantastic stagnant ponds the bulldozers created to go and nearly drown in, for instance, and there were old abandoned farmhouses, still with their wooden floors, and some window panes intact to go and explore - and, sadly, vandalise - before they became informal public toilets without any flushing mechanism). And then you grow up. (That would even include becoming a teenager, I think). In some ways, without realising it, this makes your world narrower, not broader.

But there's a cure. Find some excuse to go out there and feel exhilarated all over again, and the next thing you'll find wonderful things like a herd of Shetland ponies. (And a herd of these that you can show to a 6 year old is at least a thousand times more wonderful, isn't it?)

And if the something that you go and do out there is running, sometimes you end up doing the strangest of things. It's a bit like going and climbing in that quarry, imagining that the sisal rope you found in the garage is adequate safety gear, only safer. You start testing the limits of things. You start deliberately running up WHAT??