I have been an “on again, off again” runner for a few years now. Whilst I used to play a lots of sports back in school, I used to hate running. This was probably due to a lack of determination to run through the harder moments (hills, stitches etc). However, more recently I have found running to be very therapeutic. When running alone it is easy to get lost in a rhythm, thinking of nothing but reaching your goal. When running with friends, it is great to just be able to spend time being social whilst hopefully getting fit. That said, I have been “off again” for a while now.
However, yesterday marked the first day of a hopefully extended “on again” period. I ran for 30 minutes on the treadmill in my garage. Now that the weather is decidedly better, I plan on starting running outdoors on Tuesday and will hopefully manage 3 times a week at least from there. The biggest hurdle will be to continue running frequently while on holiday in Florida in a few weeks time…
I am lucky that within a few hundred yards of my office there are two magnificent London parks that I can run around in my lunch hour. I run along the Mall, around Green Park, cross over the Mall again in front of Buckingham Palace and then around the edge of St. James’ Park. This is a distance of about 5k/3 miles, so constitutes a good work out. I have created a pushpin map of this over on Windows Live Local in case you want to try it.
My friend John has a goal in mind for his recently instigated training regime – the Great North Run. I prefer 10k runs myself, but unfortunately I am not around for the one I would usually run. I will just have to find an alternative. Any suggestions for a good 10k run in the UK anyone?
I got a Polar S610i watch for my birthday, and yesterday was the first time I have used it. It will store profiles of your heartrate during your workout, and I can download them to my computer. I think it will make a world of difference to me, since it can show me in hard numbers that my fitness is improving over time. Being the competitive soul that I am, beating myself is always a great motivator!
