Matt Gets Running

My plan to get back to run­ning three times a week, to help me recover some fit­ness before the Bris­tol 10K, seems to be start­ing off okay. I fol­lowed up Monday’s run with another run today, so that’s my two week­day runs done. I’ll get some­thing a bit longer in at the week­end. Today’s run […]

I’m a 3 cus­tomer. In fact, I just used my 3 MiFi dongle to start writ­ing this blog post in the “cloud”, from my comfy spot in Boston Tea Party in Clifton Vil­lage. I’ve been using 3 for mobile inter­net for years, and I find them a lot more reli­able than cafe Wi-Fi. And their […]

I approached this year’s Bath Half Mara­thon with more than a little trep­id­a­tion, and rightly so, it turned out. Since the Bris­tol Half, I just haven’t trained enough. Partly that’s due to winter, and partly because my routine’s been knocked off-kilter by quit­ting my day job. I also put on some weight over the last […]

I’m pre­pared for the morn­ing. I thought a glimpse into the array of stuff I’m drag­ging along with me might be inter­est­ing, espe­cially for those who’ve never raced. So, from roughly left-to-right, top-to-bottom: Clothes, includ­ing: Shorts, a little on the large side. But bet­ter than run­ning in the now-quite-clapped-out pair I’ve been run­ning in since […]

I’m in two minds as to whether to run tomor­row. I should prob­ably do a last bit of prac­tice for the Bath Half — I haven’t run more than 10km in ages. On the other hand, my right ankle is feel­ing quite odd at the moment. It’s pos­sible I did some­thing to it yes­ter­day, when I […]

The week­end before last, I ran 10K. Last week­end, I ran 7K through rain and mud to review those Adi­das shoes. Both runs involved climb­ing from river level up to above the height of the Sus­pen­sion Bridge. Today, I looked out of the win­dow at the spring sun­shine, and decided to give myself a break. […]

Last Sat­urday, I thought about jog­ging, looked out of the win­dow, and saw it was rain­ing. Then I went out any­way, because it was a good chance to test out my new Adi­das trail shoes. New Adi­das shoes? Didn’t you just buy a pair of Mizunos, Matt? Yup. But Sports Direct’s media agency (hi, Lucie!) had […]

On Sunday, I felt pretty good, and the weather wasn’t quite as damn cold as it had been on Sat­urday, so I set out to do a respect­able dis­tance. I did my first 10K train­ing jog the year, though Leigh Woods (hand­ily, my nor­mal Leigh Woods route plus a loop of the “purple path” works […]

It has been pretty nippy in Bris­tol recently, though we escaped the blanket of snow that covered the major­ity of the coun­try last week. It’s 2C out­side right now, in the middle of the day, and I was told that there’s more cold weather on the way. I took advant­age of a slight gap in the […]

My admir­ing hordes (hello, Mar­garet!) have been won­der­ing whether I made it out for my fourth “res­ol­u­tion” run of Janu­ary, and the answer is a resound­ing “yes”. I didn’t enjoy the first kilo­metre of Friday’s run, des­pite it being a nice day. I hadn’t slept that well, and I wasn’t really in the mood for running. […]