So after my disastrous treadmill run after graduating I decided to go out into the "real world". Still coughing and wheezing a little but always feel better when outside.
I had heard about the lack of motivation and purpose, having no plans to follow after graduating felt by lots of us. I should have run early on Thursday but didn't feel like it and couldn't be bothered in the afternoon.
I didn't want to get in the habit of making excuses though, because in the past it has been so easy to give up when things got hard. I actually enjoy running now hen I get out there and find having to take rest days annoying.
I got out of my nice warm bed at 7.30 am and left the house by 8.
It was a beautiful sunny Sunday morning, a bit chilly, I could see my breath in front of me and my shadow looked like the crazy mirrors at the fairground, stretching out in front of me about a foot wide and fifteen feet long.
I mixed up my playlist so that I wouldn't know how long I had been running for. There's a long road near my house that goes gradually down and then a long rise and then down again, a total of about 0.8 miles that looks good to run down.
I have been looking at it since week 6 but having achy knees I've been avoiding roads and pavements and running on the grass but decided to try it, so my knees might ache a bit afterwards, I'll cope.
I walked the warm up and ran down the road and up the hill, my first real hill in all these weeks, and began to struggle a bit but then the road went down again. I had planned to turn around and run back the other way but I chickened out as my legs felt tired already and ran around the corner onto the main road and just ran, no aim or goals, just enjoying the time and the music.
Beautiful day, hardly any cars or people apart from dog walkers, some of whom smiled encouragingly. Still quite cold. I started to struggle a bit and stopped after "just one more song".
Walked home, stretched, had a pint of milk with choc crusha syrup and cereal, banana and blueberries, waited until 10 am and did my front garden as it had grown far too long and looked like there could be a tiger lurking in it (tiger attacks are unfortunately far too common in manchester) and then not having techie apps had a look on mapometer to see roughly how far I had run.
It looked like 3.64 miles/5.86 km and judging from my music it took about 34 minutes. Not much improvement on other weeks, I could have run further without this annoying cough.
There's nothing particularly interesting about this run, I've just got into the habit of posting when I've had a nice experience. Today was very nice and made me glad I hadn't turned off my alarm and gone back to sleep.
Post graduation run.
First Consolidation Run 
Woohoo! Good run tonight!
First run after graduation in the cold
Lovely graduation run
