Hello everybody!
I started week 8 this evening. I felt fairly confident about it and was eager to get moving as it was very chilly when I stepped outside. On my warm-up walk I checked out the little spot between the two houses, wondering whether Mr Fox would be there - but alas, he was not.
I ran a little later than usual as I'd stayed late at work to plan, mark, procrastinate, complain about how much work I have to do, and suchlike, so the roads were a little quieter, which was nice.
I found my ankles a little bit stiff and unwilling to cooperate to begin with, but they weren't painful or anything. The feeling went away and returned at around the 20-minute mark. I'll make sure that my ankles get a good stretching the next time I go out for a run. I overtook a lady walking her enthusiastic puppy and then overtook her again later. I wasn't trying to break any records today, but I was setting myself little targets. I use runkeeper to track my runs, as I find looking at the stats really interesting and encouraging ("Hey, I just burned over 250 calories!" etc.), and it tells you every 5 minutes how many miles/km you've covered. So I said to myself, 'Okay, in the next 5 minutes get to this many miles.' I shocked myself when I told myself to get to 2.2 miles before the next interval and I'd gotten to 2.7! I was shocked but very proud of myself. I kept on running and kept up the pace pretty consistently throughout.
I ran into a bit of an annoyance at 7.30 when once again my alarm went off, and I had to unstrap my phone from my arm to turn it off and resume the podcast. I kept running whilst I did this and managed to keep up a good pace. I finished on a high, upping the pace for the entire minute.
According to runkeeper, I broke 3 records today. Now I've only recently begun tracking my runs, and I'm obviously very early on in my running career, but after a stressful week this was a real confidence booster! I broke the record for the longest duration (makes sense), most calories burned (again, makes sense), and farthest distance - 2.99 miles. Now, this includes the 5 minutes either side of the run, because fiddling too much with my phone and arm strap is a distraction, but bloody hell, I'm proud of myself tonight.
Although I obviously still have 2 runs to go, and I could have a bad run in-between now and then, I feel confident about week 9. I am so impressed by this plan. You guys know I hated PE and could never exercise and was always sceptical about it. 'No one actually enjoys exercise', I told myself. 'Those plans don't really work', I thought. Turns out I was totally wrong! I cannot sing the praises of this plan enough. It's really worked for me and if you're thinking about doing it, do it! =]
Anyway, I hope that you all have had a good day and a good run, if you went out today. Good luck to those running in races or park runs this weekend, too =]
Week 8 Run 3
Week 8, Run 1
Week 8 Run 3 and a new personal best
Week 8 Run 1
