Running

I need to get back into regular exercise. I lost some weight over the early part of the year training for Nightrider in London (great fun, 100km around London at night, highly recommended), but haven’t really been back out on my bike since due to a combination of laziness, dreadful weather and being a busy bee doing tons of other things.

The net result is that I’ve put all the weight back on. Boo, and indeed, hiss. Coupled with that, I managed to hurt my back this weekend shifting stuff whilst sorting our garage out and in the process reminding myself just how unfit I’ve become.

So, it’s time to dust of the running shoes and get back out on the road. Now, I quite like running once I’m out there. It’s just the getting out of the house bit that I struggle with. And the inevitable ‘WOE SO UNFIT’ bit which is really depressing given how often I used to ‘just pop out for a 10k run’.

I used to run quite a lot back in the day. I met a friend through NCT classes when Ed was born and we quite quickly got into running reasonable distances fairly regularly. We did quite a few of the local 10k races, and got reasonably fit. I’ve also done half a dozen half marathons (five Great North Runs and one Leeds Half) in my time, so I’m not new to running in any sense.

I bought myself a new running top last weekend too, in the forlorn hope that it’d help motivate me to get out again. In hindsight a short-sleeved running top perhaps isn’t the best or most appropriate garment to go running in December, but heck. Layers are where it’s at.

I’ll no doubt be charting my progress on here, and I’ll be trying out a few online tools to help me track how I’m getting on. I’ll also be getting back out on the bike whenever I can, but that’ll be a weekend thing and weekends are looking pretty busy between now and January!

In terms of apps and online fitness tools, I’ve tinkered with Fitocracy, Runkeeper (feel free to add me if you’re on either) and a couple of others. Have you used anything that’s helped motivate you? Always keen to try something new!