Went out today with the intention of timing myself for a 3km race in my local park next week. You don’t pre-register, you just turn up with your two shiny pounds and run around a few times. I figured I’d time myself to see if it was worth entering. The slowest time on the last 2 races has been around 21mins. In theory I can make that, 7min/km isn’t new to me. Maybe a stretch, but not new.
I made 1km and threw in the towel.
I’m gutted, but I think I started out a tad fast. I’m going to get out and have another go tomorrow. The park still stinks from all the flooding too. The mud’s also thick, but I still don’t want to run on the pavement too much. I did manage a 6:45-ish kilometre though. I guess it’s not all bad.
I’ll have another go tomorrow. Hopefully I can will myself the whole way around :S
Here’s the graph!
Gyms are a foriegn place to me. I only stepped foot in a gym for a few weeks while I was in uni, in a desperate attempt to “turn myself around”. Obviously, I didn’t stick at it. Though, to be fair, I had lots of studying and gaming that needed to be done.
So a few months ago I did the gym induction at my local gym. I think my reasoning was that when the weather got worse I’d have somewhere to retreat to and no excuse not to do my running. Well over the past few days the weather has been atrocious. I’ve been there, hard at work on the treadmill. I’ve also noticed one or two things about gym users. Like the ones who give me dirty looks when I’m just plodding along, slowly eating up the kilometers. They jump on, pound away for 15mins and then jump off. I’m there for at least 25mins more than them, and I want to keep my knees and lungs. Also, nobody wears the safety cord on the treadmills. It’s a cord that clips onto your top, so if you fall off it pulls the emergency stop on the machine. Going at the speed some of them do, I’d imagine that’d be a concern.
Running on treadmills also seems to be deceptively easy. I can run 30mins on a treadmill, while I struggle to make 20mins outside. Maybe it’s because you can set your speed and you have all this information in front of you. Who knows? I just don’t want to get too comfy with it. I’ll think I’m amazing, and then when I come to run I’ll struggle horribly.
I should probably weigh myself now…
So, today I packed my first bento. A bento, for those not in the know, is a small Japanese-style lunchbox. It contains small amounts of rice, meat, eggs, fruit, veg and whatever else you can think of. Mine contained Rice, asparegus, brocolli, carrots, green beans and cherry tomatoes. Oh, and an egg! It was… oddly delicious. This is awesome, considering I don’t much care for vegetables – but a spalsh of soy sauce helped it along. My rice had a small reheating accident. It’s nothing that I can’t fix next time though. Next time (tomorrow?) I might be able to provide pictures. That is, if it looks halfway decent!
I’ve also started running again. Again, for those not in the know, I’ve been running since about February and recently completed the Race for Life in Newcastle. 42.5mins to cover 5km. It was tough, but something I want to do again. Unfortunately I’ve been slacking off lately, and I’ve had to cut myself back to 15mins and build up my base again.
My plan at the moment, stands at Mon: 15mins, Wed: 15mins, Sat: 20mins. Then probably repeat next week. And hopefully by then I’ll have found a decent training schedule to follow in time for my next 5k! The Big Fun Run in Aberdeen on the 12th Oct. Wish me luck, I’ve got a feeling I’ll be needing it ;)