Running. Like the wind.

So. Running.

I'm a runner now. Today I ran. Kind of...

Blue Crush and I are in training for a half marathon later this year. I'm not telling anyone about it because they would never believe I could do it. I just want to present them with the photos of me having completed it. I'm not even going to talk about any running I do...in the words of the great Elvis "a little less conversation a little more action".

According to one of the marathon training websites I've read I need to be able to run for half an hour without stopping before I start to train properly for the actual half marathon. After that they estimate that anyone could run a half marathon with about 3 or 4 months training. As the race we're thinking of is in October this should be achievable. Easy peasy (hahaha).

I can't currently run for half an hour though. Not even close. So my plan is to make sure I train for at least half an hour, even if it's not all running. In theory the ratio of running to walking should become more running-heavy over time. Today I did 5 laps of the Swan Pond in Ryde:

I ran 1, walked 1, ran 1, walked 1, ran 0.5, walked 0.5. A lap of running was about 4 minutes. I dare say I could have run a bit longer if pushed, but in total it filled my half hour and was nicely measurable. I also had to concentrate on weaving in between swans and swan poo, and people feeding the swans, which took my mind off the running a bit.

As it's dark in the evenings (not to mention cold and miserable) I'm going to spend week nights at my local posh gym on the treadmill and in the pool, generally building my strength. Next Saturday I'm going to attempt the laps of the Swan Pond again and see how much further I can run. I'm hoping to be able to run 5 laps by the middle of March. I don't know if that's ambitious or not, but I look forward to seeing some improvement no matter how long it takes.

I have some really comfortable running trainers which I bought a couple of years ago, with Nike+ which tracks my time, distance, pace etc. Today I burnt 270ish calories too. Bonus. This is them:

I'm still feeling motivated, and it feels good. And I don't want to undo the hard work of this afternoon, so I'm going to make myself a nice, healthy dinner!!