runography

In order to track progress as I set out to train for a 10km race, and give me some extra focus I have decided to develop Runography. It’s in the very early stages of development so will be subject to a fair amount of change over the first month or two as I get it setup the way I want to go. My unfit friend had started Cycling last year and that helped show me that anything was possible. When he setup his cycleography blog I asked if he’d mind if I did similar for running, so here we are.

Over the past 7 years my exercising has consisted mainly of one or two games of 5-a-side football per week. Over this same period I have seen my weight increase and my fitness levels reduce. At one point I was topping the scales at around 14st 7lb. Lots of late nights, beer and cigarettes had taken their toll. Around September/October 2007 I changed to diet drinks which resulted in a little weight loss, thankfully I wasn’t gaining anymore. I have 3 kids now and would really like to see them growing up so I can have a laugh when they have kids of their own. Exercise will increase my life expectancy so I can achieve that.

In January as another game of 5-a-sides was called off due to lack of numbers (becoming an ever more regular occurrence) I realised that I was going to have to do something else if I wanted to get the exercise I needed. A couple of guys that I work with were going to the local gym a few times a week, so I decided I’d join them, so I booked myself in for an induction for January 14th 2008.

I didn’t have a proper pair of training shoes so on the morning of my induction I headed to my local sports superstore and went in looking for a pair of shoes. For some reason I headed over to the Nike/Reebok stands but was redirected to the Asics/New Balance stands when I mentioned I’d probably be doing a lot of running.

January sales and without having a clue what I was doing I ended up paying £35 for a pair of Asics GT-2120. This turned out to be an excellent deal as not only are they are an excellent running shoe, which I had no idea about at the time, the RRP was a whopping £85 . A bit of luck at the start was nice. Looking back now, I should have bought 2 pairs but I wasn’t to know that I would actually stick it out at that point.

I have been trying to configure the Simple Graph Plugin so I can display my progress, but so far it’s failing to display so instead I’ll have to tell you here.

Starting weight at gym was a nice 14st 0lb, the scales at home had me down as 13st 5lb. One of them is lying… you can add a couple of pounds to gym because I have shoes, shorts and shirt on, but not a 9lb difference. The scales at the gym are digital, at home I have analogue scales.

My current weight after training since January is 13st 7lb at gym, 12st 13lb at home. You’d think after all this time I’d have worked out my weight properly.

My first attempt on the treadmill, I set the time to 5mins and ran 956m, I was totally exhausted and feeling a bit dizzy, but was happy that I’d started.

On Friday 28th March after lots of training since January, I went out for a run at lunchtime and completed 7.17km (4.45 miles) in 39:39, my longest ever run. Progress has been amazing and there’s still a long way to go.