Matt Gets Running

The Bris­tol 10K was my first race, this time last year. It’s a good, fun race, with a whole lot of people — 9,000 fin­ished this year — and it’s right on my door­step. It only takes me twenty minutes to get to the start line, and then we run right back past my flat […]

It has not been a bril­liant run-up to the Bris­tol 10K. I feel pretty good, mind you, and I’m sure there’ll be no prob­lem doing it. But I’d had hopes of los­ing more weight (I’ve plat­eaued since I was ill a few weeks ago. I’m well now, just not back on the wagon.) And I […]

So, hav­ing checked I’d got everything about three times, I set off this morn­ing to walk down to the start of the Bris­tol 10K. Everything was very civ­il­ised and well-organised. I got a pre­view of what was to come by walk­ing in through what would become the “handouts at the fin­ish” sec­tion, where they were […]

Like I said in my last update, I fan­cied get­ting out for a nice long run this week­end, and this morn­ing I made good on that. I ran from home, out along the towpath under the Sus­pen­sion Bridge, all the way to the far entrance to Leigh Woods, then up into the forest. I did a […]

Wel­come to the 100th blog post­ing on Matt Gets Run­ning To mark the occa­sion, here’s a video of my (Good) Fri­day run, along the Avon Gorge towpath, up the hill into Leigh Woods, around a little detour—to reverse out of some of the worst of the mud I ran into!—and then back to the Clifton […]

Yup, as you can see by the scene behind the scary, wonky-sunglassed weirdo in the pic­ture, it was a really nice day today. And I went on a route through Leigh Woods, which was gor­geous. Not con­tent with doing the 8K through the woods like I did last time, going out along the towpath, up […]

Hello, lovely read­ers! You’re look­ing great today. Have you lost weight? Yes, you can tell I’m but­ter­ing you up for some­thing, can’t you? Turns out that it’s only a couple of months until the Bris­tol 10K, which is hap­pen­ing on 9th May. My very first race! So, as you might expect, I’m here, cap in hand, […]

Yup, went out and did another 10K today. Wasn’t entirely sure I was going to — if I’d not felt good I’d have cut it short — but it was fine. Nice and slow, up Bridge Val­ley Road, around the edge of Clifton Down to the Water Tower, a loop around Durd­ham Down, then back […]

Def­in­ite rule of run­ning: once you’ve done a dis­tance once, it’s a lot easier, psy­cho­lo­gic­ally, to do it again. Today I was feel­ing pretty good, and I’d had a decent night’s sleep, and the weather looked okay, so I decided to do 10K again. And here it is on RunKeeper.com. It was actu­ally 10.42km, about the […]

I don’t know when this week became the week to push and to prove myself. But appar­ently it did. I should have got out run­ning last night, but I was knackered after work, so I did what any brave and stout young fel­low would have done: gave up on the idea and went to bed early. This […]