Is it just me or does running (or maybe it's just training) sometimes feel like hard work? I mean, I love this thing that I do and I know that because I keep doing it in the full knowledge that it will never be something that I will excel at... Mo Farah I am not!
In fact a few of my nearest and dearest will know I had to take a whole week off my London Marathon training back in 2007 when I decided to see how long I could run at Paula Radcliffe's race pace and ended up falling off the treadmill!*
But I digress....
It occurred to me whilst out on a longer run on Saturday that I needed to try and pick some target races so that I would have something to keep my motivation going and get me out the door each day.
There's so much happening in the running calendar that I'm somewhat spoilt for choice..5k's every week at the Bridge Inn series look good, as does my local parkrun at Ashton Court. Then there's a vast array of 10k's and half's, enough in fact for me to be scheduling these in every weekend and costing me the earth in transport and race fees....£23 for a 10k...do me a favour! With those sort of expenses my logic says that if I just go out and run a 10k route every week for three months I could treat myself to a new Garmin just in saved race entries. I know, I know...that's not the point...but still...twenty-three whole English pounds! Kinda makes me want to help Parkrun take over the world!**
Then there are the marathons*** and ultras (as if 26.2 miles isn't enough)
I wish I could run in more of these as there really are some spectacular courses to choose from. I hope maybe I will be ablt to complete all world majors including the ultimate...Qualify for Boston! But in reality, trying to work, albeit part-time and teach and renovate our flat...I'll aim for Boston as a Vet, or super Vet maybe!
So out of all of this I needed to find a way to choose what and where to run.
Well, the inspiration came when out of the blue I called up a friend on Saturday and asked if he fancied a short jog on Sunday morning.
We met up at his place and set off around the streets where we live using the time to catch up a little. He'd been suffering from some knee pain and I'd knocked out my longest run of the year to date around 12 hours previously so we kept the pace down and just enjoyed being out in the crisp clear and cool morning air. The Garmin kept buzzing out the km's and before we knew it we had not only had a hour of good company, but also bashed out 5 miles....Further than either of us thought we would be capable of.
So this got me thinking that maybe what I need to do is not focus so much on finding target races, but focus on finding target friends to run with, people we might not have seen as much as we would have liked during 2011. If they run then I'll coax them out for a jog; if they don't then I'll maybe enter some races near to them and see if I can drag them out supporting!
Either way, it would certainly seem more like fun and less like work if I get to catch up with friends at the same time....and maybe we'll get some nice high carb pub lunches in too! (I did say I like to eat too!)
So I'm going to try and make at least some of my runs a little more sociable (life permitting!) and not stress so much about training hard for fast times in short distances. Maybe those will be next years challenges!
I'll keep you posted of where I'm heading and if you fancy meeting up at any of the races/runs then drop me a note/tweet or whatever.
Run number 013: 11.44km
Run number 014: 17.66km
Run number 015: 8.13km
2012 mileage to date: 131km or 82miles...Which is almost exactly the distance door to door from home in Bristol to my parents house in Birmingham!
*Embarrassingly it was around 3 minutes...!
**Here, have another link to your excellent organisation! - Parkrun
***And just a quick point here...a Marathon is 26.2 MILES...please don't endorse the stupidly pathetic attempt at parting silly people with their money and participate in kilomarathons...You won't impress anyone my running a distance that barely gets you to the wall and that most marathoners do every week...sorry a sore point at the moment! Not to take anything away from those taking part a personal challenges. I know from experience that getting up to this distance is tough. But so is going the extra 10 miles and therefore being about to say you ran a marathon....rant over!
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