Matt Gets Running

Well, turns out I’m actu­ally crazy. Crazy like those weirdos who go out run­ning when they’re ill and tell you that it actu­ally helps. Because it helped. Not only did it help, but in some ways, the ill­ness seemed to help the run­ning, too. My lack of con­cen­tra­tion made me a bit for­get­ful. I for­got I […]

It’s a lovely day out there. Per­fect run­ning weather. Sunny and cold. Not sure if I’m going, though. I seem to be ill with some cold-y thing that’s sap­ping my energy. I just slept for ten hours, got up, had break­fast, cof­fee and Lem­sip, and I still don’t feel like I want to do any­thing. I […]

No per­sonal best for the 5K this evening — that still remains at the just-under-31 min­utes I man­aged back in Novem­ber, run­ning as fast as I sus­tain­ably could all the way. But tonight, I think, was the fastest since then, at 32:26. And con­sid­er­ing I did a nor­mal jog on the way out, then just did […]

Okay, back on the road again tonight after my birth­day break. Tonight I tried a bit of speed­work, doing some fartlek train­ing where I sprinted a bit and then recov­ered for a while at nor­mal pace, sprinted again, and so on. I trav­elled out down the Port­way as nor­mal, because every­one seems to say that warming […]

Just a quick update! Thanks for the birth­day wishes, all. I’ve been a bit off the grid since Fri­day, as my phone line has com­pletely died, tak­ing my ADSL down with it. Thanks, BT! With good luck and a fol­low­ing wind, appar­ently BT may be fix­ing the prob­lem, which is at their exchange, tomor­row. I’ve […]

I was lucky enough to be on a nice, heated, cov­ered boat this morn­ing while my col­league Chris was cycling to work through what I think I can only describe as “tor­ren­tial sleet”. That made me worry about the prospects for this evening, but it dried off and maybe even warmed up a bit by the […]

Hur­rah! At last, I’m back out on the street (that made me sound like a des­per­ate hooker, didn’t it? Hmm.) The snow has mostly melted away — the only bits I saw were the huge lumps that have been rolled to the sides of Clifton Down here and there, as pic­tured, tran­si­tory snow-boulders that stand as […]

See­ing as my snow­bound exer­cise regime is so lim­ited at the moment, I fig­ured I’d post some news about the iPhone app that got me started with run­ning! I hadn’t done any proper exer­cise for a cou­ple of years. I’d given up karate fol­low­ing a snow­board­ing injury that kept me out of the dojo for […]

Hope­fully the last photo-less and indoorsy post for a while! There’s a thaw on, and while the slush out­side has kept me on the bike tonight, Sun­day looks hope­ful for a snow-free day with a gap in the big rain that’s impend­ing. In the mean­time, another 35 mins on the exer­cise bike. Dull, but necessary, […]

Just another quick update: it’s still icy out there, but I’m keep­ing up the “doing some exer­cise” momen­tum. Just fin­ished another 35 min­utes on the exer­cise bike, this time dis­tracted by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which seems suit­ably enter­tain­ing. And remark­ably close to the orig­i­nal. Any­way. It was dull enough to do, […]