Improvements

I'm now on week 7 of my first 16 week running programme, and I'm astounded how quickly things improve.

As I've mentioned, I've never liked running, in fact I've tried to avoid it as much as possible, but now the endorphins are slowly taking over. I run every other day, ranging from 2 to 6-7 miles, and it's no longer very difficult mentally to gear up for my longer runs.

My stride length is increasing, and thus the pace, now comfortably below the 6 min per km pace. I've now done three 10k runs below 60 mins, and I now recover much, much quicker after a run. I haven't started using my old heartrate monitor, but will dig it out this weekend to start tracking that too. Once upon a time I had a resting heart rate of 46, but that was close to 20 years ago.....

The scales haven't moved much the last few weeks, but the waist has clearly shrunken a good few inches since the beginning of the year.

I reached my initial target of 50k in a month by the 16th, so I'm now upping the target to about 80. In the next few weeks the milage creeps closer to the 20mile mark per week, and in 4 weeks time the schedule introduces a 4th run per week.

I don't want to go overboard with too much pace and distance increases too soon, but while I can stick to the milage, I seem unable to run as slowly as the schedule dictates. Ah well, that's a problem I can live with.

Today's a day off, but tomorrow will see a new distance record - 7 miles. I've found a nice extension on my normal weekend Thameside route, so here's hoping the weather isn't too bad.

So far this week: 21.31km, avg pace 5.53 min per km. (Due to last weekend's long run being pushed to Bank Holiday Monday.)

This will be the first week I surpass 30km in one week :)

Will be interesting to see how far I can push myself before the race, considering I've got another 175 days to go. Theoretically I should be able to get 100 runs in before then, so I guess something around 500 miles. I suspect I might need to buy another pair of running shoes....