Review of January - a month of running and writing

At the beginning of the year I decided (foolishly) to try and run a marathon this year. It’s the sort of stupid thing that middle aged men do, and since I’m middle aged, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

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One month on and I’m still running, and getting better.

I did my first 10km run on the 2nd of January and did it in an ok time of 1 hour and 20 minutes.

At least I didn’t die.

My average pace was 7:43 minutes per kilometre. So that was my benchmark set. The goals was to be faster than that at the end of the month.

I kept up the running, and while it was not always easy, it was getting easier.

Then on January 8th I decided to try for a long run. Apparently you’re supposed to do this once a week.

I did just under 22kms in 3 hours and 17 minutes. It was very not fun and I walked for a bunch of it because I was in a lot of pain. My knees, hips, everything were killing me.

So from then on I stuck to my 10km circuit, trying to beat my last time by just a bit each time I went for a run.

Yesterday I decided to try the long run again, as it would be my last run of the month and I figured it would be a good test of my improvement.

It turns out my ‘big circuit’ is actually 18.5kms (taking out the detours from going to the toilet that I struggled with last time I tried this) and I did it in 2 hours and 13 minutes.

My average pace was 7:13 minutes per km. but most importantly I completed the entire run without walking. Now that’s a huge improvement!

In total in January, I ran about 112kms over 9 runs. Not bad for my first month of training.

I’m also not having the IT band and knee issues any more. The only discomfort I’m getting now are from tight hip flexors. But as with the IT band, some good stretching will fix that.

Overall I’m quite happy with my progress so far.

There is still plenty to work on, like my aerobic fitness and stretching, but as a start of the journey to marathon runner, I’d call it a good start.

So what’s on the cards for February?

I need to find a new circuit that is 15kms long and use that as my base distance. Then my long runs will be either 25kms or 30kms depending on how my body holds up.

As I wrote this (yesterday), my knees were aching, my back was sore, my toes under my toenails were really sore for some odd reason, and I was nearly falling asleep.

Today my legs are quite stiff and sore, as is the rest of my body, but that will wear off pretty quickly. I’m also still quite tired, so I think I need to plan my longer runs for a Saturday, so I have Sunday to recover.

January has been a good month.

I managed to find time each day to write something for @dragoroua’s Challenge 30, and that’s not easy.

That’s 30 posts just in the Challenge 30 category. No wonder my Steem Power has been going up 

It was a worthwhile challenge – so thanks Dragos for setting it up and writing up the daily summaries.

I’m looking forward to the next one.

What will February 2017 bring? Let’s wake up the day after tomorrow and find out.

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This post counts towards @dragoroua's Challenge 30

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